


To Be Where I Have Been

by deathbycoldopen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Case Fic, De-Aged Dean Winchester, Drunkenness, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Memory Loss, Mentions of Prostitution, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Season/Series 09, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:17:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathbycoldopen/pseuds/deathbycoldopen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wakes up the morning of his 26th birthday in an abandoned warehouse with no idea how he got there- or why it is that his estranged brother is there with him, and telling him that it’s the year 2015, not 2005.</p><p>It’s not hard to figure out that the de-aging spell that hit Dean affected his memory as well.  But things get a little more complicated when he finds that Sam is hiding things from him, like what exactly has happened in the years since Dean was 26, or who the man is who calls himself Dean’s best friend.  Maybe it would all be easier to deal with if someone wasn’t still waiting to finish the job they started when they cursed him.  And maybe it would be easier if this damn buzzing under his skin- and the nightmares of blood and fire- would just leave him alone long enough to let him think…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ten Years to the Day

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: involves scenes of a sexual nature between characters who are impaired or otherwise influenced by memory loss, deception, alcohol, and/or other supernatural forces, in situations where they might not have consented otherwise.
> 
> Goes AU after season 9.

 

_ Ramble on, and now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song.  _  
_I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way._  
 _I've been this way ten years to the day,_  
 _Ramble on, gotta find the queen of all my dreams._

                -"Ramble On", Led Zeppelin

 

* * *

 

_There you are, Dean._

Dean blinked his eyes open.  They shifted in and out of focus, showing him nothing but a vaguely grey ceiling, shapes and shadows sliding over it.  Something wasn’t right about it.  Something wasn’t right about where he was, how he was lying, the ringing in his ears.  Every inch of him ached and itched.  Like he’d been stuffed into skin that was three sizes too small for him, and wasn’t that a nicely disgusting image to make his stomach turn.  He focused on his surroundings instead.

Wherever he was, it wasn’t the motel where he’d gone to sleep.

He moved his hand to cover his eyes, but stopped.  There was blood on his hand.  Fresh blood, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t his.  The reason he was lying on a concrete floor in god-knows-where was starting to look less and less like a consequence of his pre-birthday celebrations, and more like something shitty and supernatural.  Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Dean?” someone shouted.  Footsteps pounded nearby, coming closer.

He frowned and tried to sit up- except then the room started spinning, the edges of his vision getting sucked back into darkness, his body collapsing in on itself as if his chest was a black hole.  Huh.  He must be worse off than he’d thought.

“Dean!”

He knew that voice.  That voice was important.  The centerpoint of his life.  If that voice sounded worried like that, then he must really be in trouble.

He tried to pull himself together, bully himself back into consciousness, but the tightness of his skin and the weight of his body dragged him down anyway.  He only managed one word before succumbing.

“Dad?” he murmured, and passed out.

***

When he woke again, it was to the rumble of the Impala, the cool leather of the shotgun seat, the smooth glass of the window.  It felt like a lullaby, more familiar and recent than the memory he clutched close to his heart of mom singing him to sleep.  This was the growl of the engine eating endless miles through endless bits of nowhere, just him, dad and Sam on the lonely road.  Well, maybe it was more like the sound of a wish than a lullaby, a half-realized thought that maybe someday they would reach the end of the road, all three of them together.  That maybe mom would be there to greet them.

Dean sighed and rubbed his eyes.  No use getting weepy just because he got knocked out.  It was a good thing he was in the Impala.  His home.  A good thing he hadn’t been picked up by something nasty while he was out.  Good thing dad had gotten there in time to help him.

Even though last he knew, dad had been working a case five states over.

“How long was I out?” he croaked, blinking at the dashboard until it was no longer fogged and blurry.

“About half an hour.”

He jumped, slamming his head against the window in his scramble to see who the fuck had just said that, because it sure as hell wasn’t John Winchester.

When his eyes finally refocused and he could actually see the driver, he stared.  And stared.  And stared just a little bit more, because he had no idea what he was fucking seeing here, it made no fucking sense.

Sam.  Driving the Impala.  As in, not at Stanford.  As in, driving the fucking Impala like he hadn’t walked out on their family four years ago.  Like he still belonged there.  Like their family was whole again, which it fucking wasn’t because Dean would’ve known.  Dad would have told him if Sam had come back- wouldn’t he?

“Woah, woah, take it easy,” Sam said, glancing over at him.  His voice was deeper now, his hair longer, his shoulders broader.  It kind of looked like he had aged fifteen years instead of just three.

Actually, scratch the kind of.  It _really_ looked like he was fifteen years older than he should be.  There were too many lines on his face, too much tension in his grip on the steering wheel.

Something wasn’t right here.

“Sam?” Dean said.  “What the fuck is going on?”

“Calm down,” Sam said.  Whatever was happening, at least Sam’s bitchface hadn’t changed at all.  “Just look in the mirror, alright?”

Dean stared at him for a little while longer, only moving when Sam glanced at him with raised eyebrows.  He hesitated before turning the rearview mirror towards his face.  There were very few instances when looking in the mirror will answer all questions, and even fewer when that was a _good_ thing- but no.  It was just his face looking back at him.  Twenty-six years old instead of twenty-five, maybe, but the difference of one year wasn’t ever all that noticeable, not from one day to the next.

“It’s my face,” he said dryly, shoving the mirror back in Sam’s direction.  “I’m a little bit more curious about what’s happened to yours.”

“What?”  Sam frowned, highlighting the new lines crossing his forehead, the shadows under his eyes that were never there before.

“And while we’re answering questions,” Dean continued, his sluggish energy picking up now that he had a fight to pick.  “You mind telling me what the hell you’re doing here?  Because last I knew, you were living the apple pie dream life over at Stanford after walking out on me and dad.”

“What are you-” Sam stopped mid-sentence, the beginnings of realization flickering across his face.  “Wait.  Shit.”

Dean waited, watching his younger brother who had somehow become a lot older than him.  Sam was chewing on his lip, glancing between Dean and the road, clearly trying to work something out.  “Care to share with the class, Sammy?” Dean asked finally.

Another glance in Dean’s direction, and then Sam stared resolutely at the road.  His fingers tightened around the wheel.  “Dean,” he said after a long pause.  “What year is it?”

“What?  Did you hit your head or something-”

“Just answer the damn question,” Sam said with a sigh.

Dean narrowed his eyes at him, but answered anyway.  Not like the year was a big deal anyway.  “2005,” he said slowly, with as much condescension as he could possibly fit in five syllables.  “January 24th, 2005, to be specific, and hey, it looks like it’s 9:34 in the morning.  Why, what year do _you_ think it is?”

Sam gave him what might have been a sympathetic, comforting look if Sam wasn’t so tense himself.  “Dean, it’s 2015,” he said quietly.  “Today is your thirty-sixth birthday.”

“What?”  Dean stared at him.  This had to be some kind of joke, right?  No way he somehow forgets ten years of his life.  No fucking way.

“I’ve been hunting with you for years,” Sam continued.  “Ever since dad-”  He stopped again, eyes widening.

“Ever since dad _what_?” Dean asked, feeling something like horror buzzing in his bones.  Or maybe the buzzing had been there already, a steady hum in the back of his mind, and he was only now becoming aware of it.

“Ever since dad... retired,” Sam said, his voice tight and controlled.  

Ever since he… _what?_ “Sam, you had better start making sense real soon, or so help me I’ll-”

“It’s complicated, alright?  Look, we were out on a hunt, checking out this factory where some people had gone missing, and I guess you got hit by some kind of… de-aging spell.  Which I guess affected your memory too.”

“De-aging spell,” Dean said incredulously.  “Yeah, no, I think you outplayed your hand there a bit.  What’s really going on here, Sam?”

“I told you,” Sam snapped, and something in his face made Dean suddenly feel like this wasn’t a joke anymore.  “We were in the factory, we split up to cover more ground, and then I heard a gunshot so I came running.  By the time I got there, whoever you’d shot at was gone, but I guess they’d just cast the spell because I saw you… you know, changing.  Into your younger self.  Believe me, if I were making this up, I’d come up with a more convincing story.”

Dean swallowed.  Not a joke then.  Right.  Then what the fuck was all that about dad _retiring?_  “So you’re telling me this is the future?” he said, giving a weak laugh that made his head throb.  “Hey, where’s my jetpack?”

That earned him another glare from Sam.  “Would you at least _try_ to take this seriously?  We’ve got a lot more questions right now than we have answers.  I don’t know about you, but that makes me nervous.”

Dean scoffed.  “Jeez, Sammy, where’s your sense of humor gone?”  Sam just glared at him again.  He sighed and slumped back in his seat, eyeing his younger brother.  Older brother?  How did that even work now?  “Fine.  So what now?  Take an ad out in the paper?  ‘De-aged hunter searching for his lost years,’ that oughta do it, don’t you think?”

Sam ignored that, choosing instead to frown into the distance.  “I’d like to figure out exactly what’s been done to you before we try to track this creep down.  Make sure there aren’t any side effects that sneak up on us, and maybe find a way to reverse it.  How are you feeling, by the way?”

Dean shrugged.  “A little sore, but it’s nothing I can’t handle,” he said.  It wasn’t exactly a lie.  He was pretty sure he could handle it, even though it felt a little bit like his body was a metal bar just hit by a bolt of lightning, and it hadn’t stopped vibrating yet.

“Are you sure?” Sam asked, glancing at him in concern.

“Yeah Sam, I’m fine,” Dean snapped.  “Jesus, who died and made you boss.”

Sam shifted in his seat.  Dean sat up straighter, narrowing his eyes at him.

“What?” he asked suspiciously.  “Wait, did someone die?”  Sam didn’t answer.  “Tell me, did someone _die_?”

“What? No!” Sam said.  His tone was a little bit too he-doth-protest-too-much for Dean’s taste.

“Sam,” he said, interjecting as much authority as he could into his voice.  It was a little bit harder to do when he was trying to order around a much older, much larger version of Sam than he was used to.

Sam sighed.  “It’s no one you know.  Not yet anyway.”  He looked at Dean.  “Trust me.”

Dean narrowed his eyes, but let it lie for now.  Whatever Sam was hiding, he’d figure it out sooner or later.  Sam may have spent the last four years that Dean could remember away at school, and he may have aged ten years on top of that, but Dean still knew him better than he knew himself.

By the time the Impala rolled to a stop, Dean’s eyelids were too heavy to hold open, his body aching too much to bear without passing out.  A bizarre sort of restlessness had been passing through him in waves for the entire drive, making his heart pound and slow in unpredictable bursts.  He couldn’t stay awake, but the restlessness wouldn’t let him sleep, leaving him in a half-doze that exhausted him even more than alertness did.

He blinked when the rumble of the engine cut off and looked around with dazed, unfocused eyes.  He’d expected them to stop at whatever shitty motel they were staying at, or at least a semi-comfortable abandoned house.  Really, anywhere but the gravel drive leading to what looked like a fucking concrete factory, barely any more comfortable than the factory they’d just left.  What the hell.

Dean stumbled out of the car.  His limbs felt strange as he straightened, like they weighed less than they should, like his skin was too tight, like he was both numb and in pain all at once.  He put a hand on the roof of the car to steady himself, pretending that he hadn’t almost fallen in the process of standing up.  “Where are we?” he asked suspiciously as Sam got out.

“Uh,” Sam said, looking nervous.

Dean sighed, pulled out his gun, and pointed it at the man claiming to be his brother.

“Dean, holy crap, it’s me,” Sam said, putting his hands up.  “Seriously, it’s just me.”

“Yeah, you understand why I don’t believe that,” Dean said with a snort.

Sam swallowed, looking at him with concern.  “Alright, you want proof?” Sam asked.  He reached into his pocket slowly.  Dean bristled and gripped the gun more firmly, despite the tremor that was making its way down into his fingers.  Keeping their eyes locked, Sam sliced through the skin on his arm with a silver knife, revealing… nothing.  After raising his eyebrows, Sam put the knife back and pulled out a flask of holy water.  Nothing.

Dean hesitated.  “Sam?” he whispered finally.  He sagged, all of his temporary strength leaving him along with the adrenaline.  Sam was here.  Sam was _here_.  Hunting with him.  Ten years in the future, _Sam was here._

Sam gave him a reassuring smile.  “Yeah Dean, it’s me.  Let’s get you inside, alright?  You look like you’re about to pass out.”  He reached out and grabbed Dean’s arm, guiding him down the steps.  Dean almost jerked his arm away- he didn’t need _Sam_ to take care of _him_.  He thought better of it when he stumbled on the smooth concrete, and Sam’s supporting hand was the only thing that kept him upright.  Fucking hell.

Then they were through the door and down some stairs, and Dean momentarily forgot his irritation at the sight of a _secret fucking batcave_.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, staring at the huge room lined with bookshelves and populated by elegant tables.  It looked like a high class library, or what some rich guy would call his “study” while smoking thousand dollar cigars.  It definitely didn’t look like the hole in the ground factory or abandoned bomb shelter that Dean had expected.  “What the fuck?”

Sam chuckled and led him down another flight of stairs.

Dean openly gaped at their surroundings, too shocked to even be annoyed that Sam was leading him around like he didn’t even know how to walk.  “What the hell is this place?” Dean asked as they passed a set of machines that looked like they were from the fifties.  At least.

Sam hesitated, long enough that Dean tore his eyes away from the table featuring a glowing atlas of the world in order to look at his brother.  “It’s…” Sam said finally, his eyes flicking away from Dean.  “It’s a long story.”

“Okay, well then, give me the cliffnotes version,” Dean said.

“I’d… I’d rather not.”

Dean raised his eyebrows.  “Come again?”

Sam sighed, still not meeting Dean’s eyes.  “Look, you’ve just gone through a… a trauma, and I don’t want to overload you until we know exactly what happened to you.”

“You’re shitting me,” Dean said.  “So what, you’re not going to tell me _anything_?  Last I checked, I’m twenty-six, Sam, not five.  Whatever it is you don’t want to ‘overload’ me with, I can handle it.”

Sam shifted uneasily.  “You don’t know that,” he said.

“Yeah, I kinda do!  You’re the one who apparently can’t deal.”

“I want to tell you, Dean,” Sam protested.  “I just don’t want to make this worse, alright?”

“Bullshit.  I don’t know what your game is, but there’s no reason you can’t-”

“Dean, I’m not going to tell you, and that’s the end of it,” Sam snapped with barely controlled fury.  It radiated out of him like heat from a wildfire, too strong and devastating for the conversation at hand.  Dean nearly took a step back to protect himself.  This version of Sam was a lot taller, broader, _stronger_ than he’d ever been.  Stronger than Dean.  If this older, more powerful Sam wanted something, there wasn’t much that Dean could do to resist.

He’d just have to find out what Sam was hiding on his own.

“Fine,” Dean said through a clenched jaw.  The itch resonating through his body reasserted itself.  He felt like clawing at his skin, tearing ribbons of blood out until the itch went away.  Until everything was normal again.  “Is there a bed around here somewhere, or would getting to one be too much for my young, fragile body to survive?”

Sam nodded shortly.  He reached for Dean’s arm again to help him, but Dean shook him off angrily.  Spell or no spell, there was only so much babying he could take from his little brother.  He had a feeling this whole experience would be trying enough as it was.


	2. The Piper's Calling You to Join Him

_Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know,_   
_The piper's calling you to join him,_   
_Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know_   
_Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?_

             -"Stairway to Heaven," Led Zeppelin

 

* * *

 

 

_The handle is slick and warm with blood.  It flows from his arm and through the blade of bone and through his arm as it shudders to the rhythm of the screaming girl’s heartbeat._

_“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here,” she says.  She’s lying, but he’s the only one who knows that._

_“Where’s the angel,” he hisses, and stabs her with the blade of bone before she tells him another lie.  “He’s supposed to be here.”  Blood drips down his arm, blood flows all around him, and it burns like the salvation he’ll never have.  “He’s supposed to save me.”_

_“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here,” she lies.  She smiles up at the sky, at the bright blue sky the same color as her eyes, and she opens her arms to welcome the wounded soldier.  She opens her arms as if she could lift herself from the ground and fly.  She looks at him and paints her blood around his black eyes.  “He’ll always come for you.  That’s the whole point.”_

_The light blossoms around him and wraps a searing hand around his arm, and he screams because it burns, because there is nothing but pain and fear here and there is blood tainting the pure white and it’s all his fault, all his fault.  The girl is swallowed by the light, or maybe she’s the one who is swallowing it, and the blade clatters on the ground as he’s lifted up, up, up-_

_Dean Winchester is saved._

Dean woke with a gasp.  For a moment the sweat coating his skin felt like blood; he bolted upright, desperately scrubbing at his skin to get it off, before he realized that it had just been a dream.  Right.  Just a dream.

He rubbed his eyes with shaking hands, the words echoing in his head.   _Dean Winchester is saved_.  He couldn’t quite hear the voice that had given them to him, just had a vague memory of an ear-splitting whine building and building until the words formed unbidden in his mind.  They circled him like vultures waiting patiently for him to die.  If he could wait them out, if he could survive long enough, maybe the words would become clearer- but he wouldn’t last that long.  All that would be left to see would be a rotting corpse in the desert, and the vultures pecking out its eyes.

His black eyes surrounded by blood.

He shuddered.  He’d seen his share of nightmare fuel over the years.  Hell, he’d probably seen more than most people could bear, and certainly more than anyone would ever want to see.  But he’d never experienced a nightmare so vivid and intense.  It was still lurking inside of him, even while he was awake, lurking in his veins like a fever.  He itched for a shower, a bath, a piece of sandpaper, anything to scrape away the blood he could still feel seeping into his pores.

Or maybe he just itched, period.  That same jittery, buzzing energy was still dancing on his bones, under his skin, like an electric shock drawn out into a long torture.  It was worse now than when he’d gone to sleep.  Way worse.

He took a deep breath, trying to get himself under control.  He needed to do something or he would explode.  He looked around the unfamiliar room, hopeful that maybe he could do some snooping while he was awake.  Those were his guns on the wall, he noted, and his records and his picture of Mom.  Sam had told him that this was his room, so he supposed that made sense that he’d put those things up.

His room.  Ha.  It could have been yet another skeevy motel room and he would have felt the same level of attachment.  He lived on the road, driving his baby, not cooped up in a prison like this.

Still, as he looked around the room, something about it nagged at him, adding to the cacophony of shivers moving up and down his spine.  It wasn’t that he had to do something in general, he realized slowly.  It was that he had to do something specific.  Something was missing here.  Something he had to find.

Someone he had to find.

_Dean Winchester is saved._

If it had been any normal day, he would have immediately begun looking for Dad, looking for Sam.  But it wasn’t a normal day.  Dad was… retired, whatever that meant, and Sam was here.  Or rather, _a version_ of Sam was here. _His_ Sam was far, far away, across the country and across time.

But whatever was needling under his skin, it wasn’t his dad's or his brother’s safety.  It was something else, something familiar and alien and comforting and frightening all at once.  Someone he had to find.

His eyes fell on one of the weapons hanging on the wall, and his breath stopped.  A blade, rough-hewn and savage.  The crude weapon was made of stone, cut and sharpened to a wicked edge, lashed to a handle of bone.  It wasn’t the same blade he’d held in his dream- that one had been something else, something vile and primal and addictive.  This blade spoke of desperation, not sadistic violence, but there was something about it that set his hair on edge.

The itch heightened into a near frenzy.  He stood and began pacing around the room, despite the exhaustion weighing down his limbs and the dizziness that made the room tilt alarmingly.  Those goddamn meaningless words were still crawling around his head- _Dean Winchester is saved_ \- and now the stone blade was tumbling around with them.  Something about it resonated with the desperation shivering in his entire body, though he couldn’t for the life of him say why.

He glanced at it again.  It had been given a place of honor on the wall, centered among his familiar weapons stockpile.  As if it was something the older version of himself was _proud_ of.  Something he wanted to memorialize.

Someone he needed to find.

He kicked at the bed in frustration and yelped at the pain as his bare foot connected with the solid wooden frame.  This was ridiculous.  Recovering from a spell or not, he couldn’t stay cooped up for another fucking second.  He needed a drink.

He got dressed quickly, that nameless urgency pounding in his veins as he laced his shoes and grabbed his jacket.  The hall was dark and quiet when he poked his head out the door, but he crept along it quietly anyway.  He felt immensely stupid sneaking around like a teenager avoiding his parents.  But Sam- even the version that he _did_ know- would never let him go out like this.  Which, really, only made Dean want to leave even more.

He stopped at the door to the massive library that stood between him and the exit, cursing internally.  Sam was sitting at one of the tables, researching.  He sat facing away from Dean, but there was no way that Dean could sneak past him without-

A massive snore broke through Dean’s thoughts.  He jumped, then smiled slowly.  Sam wasn’t researching with his head bent over the books, he was _sleeping_ on them.  Dean crept closer, taking care to be silent, but smirking at the familiar sight of him snoring into some giant tome.  Sam always vehemently denied that he snored, claiming that Dean just woke _himself_ up with his own snores.  He always conveniently forgot that Dean had been looking out for him long enough that he could probably identify that snore out of a lineup.  Of… snores.  Shut up.

Sam shifted in his sleep, brow furrowing.  It emphasized the unfamiliar lines on his face, the years that Dean couldn’t remember.  It broke the illusion that this was some ordinary night on a hunt, and his little brother had fallen asleep while doing research yet again.  This was a future that Dean didn’t recognize, and a brother who had lived through all the years that Dean was missing.  There was so much about this Sam that he didn’t know, and that made him uneasy.  He’d always known him better than anyone could ever get to know him, better than Sam knew himself, but now…  How had Sam even gotten back into hunting?  Had he made up with Dad?  How had he found this place?  How long had they lived here, he and Sam, the two of them a family with a home?  What had happened to give Sam that haunted look in his eye?  What had happened that made Sam think he could hide all this from Dean?

Well, Dean conceded, this goddamn spell had a bit to do with that last one.  But still, it didn’t change the fact that Dean wasn’t a baby.  He might be ten years younger than he should be, but he could still take care of himself, thank you very much.  Hell, he could take care of himself _and_ Sam, just like he always did.  That was his _job_.  No matter how many years had passed, he knew in his bones that _that_ would never change.

He crept past Sam without waking him, and slipped out the door.

***

The bar was disappointing, to say the least.  Apparently the now-homebase was in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and the nearest bar was over twenty minutes away, three towns over.  And calling it a bar might be a bit generous.  It was more like a pisshole than anything else.

At least it wasn’t completely deserted.  A few people were scattered around the dark, dingy room, though Dean couldn’t see much of them aside from their general shape in the darkness.  He stepped toward the bar and felt his boot stick to what must have been years of spilled beverages, and he kind of had to wonder why anyone was there at all.

Probably not for the same reason he was here, he thought wryly, sitting at the bar and ordering a double shot of whiskey.  Not many people ended up de-aged ten years and needing some escape from their overbearing younger brother.  Though once you got drunk enough, maybe the reasons why didn’t matter so much anymore.  That was the whole point of doing it, after all.

The bartender put his whiskey in front of him and he downed it in one go.  She raised her eyebrows at him, wiping her hands on a rag that was so dirty it was probably a little counterproductive as a cleaning tool.  “Another?” she asked, already reaching for his glass.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, winking at her.  She was about twenty years too old for him- probably out of his preferred age range even if he was still thirty-six- but hey, he had to keep in practice somehow.  She gave him a look that said that she’d probably chew him up and spit him out if he tried anything more, and filled his glass.

He sipped this drink more slowly as she wandered away, but the itch under his skin had him swallowing faster and faster, relishing the burn and swimming lightness that it cause.  Welcome distractions from that godawful restlessness.  By the time he’d finished his second and had ordered a third, he was starting to feel pretty good about things.

If only that fucking itch would go away.

He looked around the bar, trying to see through the gloom.   Seriously, at the very least they could have gotten better lighting in here- although maybe it was better if he couldn’t see exactly what that wet patch was on the stool next to him.

He just needed something to focus on, and he would be fine.  The day had been pretty fucking stressful, after all.  Getting wasted and climbing into some hot chick’s pants- yeah, that oughta do it.  The Dean Winchester tried and true method for getting past whatever shit you’re dealing with.

Unfortunately, this being bumfuck and all, pickings were a little slim on the whole getting-in-someone’s-pants front.  A trucker sat half-asleep in a booth, his fingers slipping off his beer as he dozed; a couple were practically in each other’s laps, drunkenly making out; a man was hunched at the far end of the bar, head bowed and hands curled around an empty glass.  Not exactly the cream of the crop out in the middle of nowhere.

He was almost done with his third drink when the door swung open and someone strolled to stand near Dean.  The girl caught the bartender’s attention and grinned lazily at her.  “What kind of beers you got?” she asked.

“Bud and Coors, pretty much,” the bartender said.  The grin slid off the girl’s face in favor of an expression more like disgust.  At that, the bartender gave her the same sharp glance she’d given Dean.  “Don’t make faces, girl, those are the choices and turnin’ your nose up at them ain’t gonna change that.”

Dean eyed the girl as she sighed and pulled out her wallet.  Pretty, blonde hair, blue eyes, nice rack.  She looked like she might be on the wrong side of jailbait- but the bartender grunted at the ID she handed her, looking assured in its authenticity.  Fair game, then.  Perfect.

“Busy night tonight,” the girl commented to the bartender, taking her driver’s license back.  The bartender looked at her with the same sharp glance she’d given Dean, catching the disdain in her voice.

“Girl, don’t you know better than to insult the folks who deal with your food and drink?” the bartender asked crossly as she popped the top off the beer.

The girl shrugged.  “Who doesn’t like a little spit in their food?”  She took her beer and sat down a few seats away from Dean, closer to the back of the bar.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye, trying to judge when would be the best moment to approach her.  Not for a while, it seemed: her hair slid in front of her face, obstructing any attempts at eye contact.  She remained intent on her shitty beer.  No one here was drinking just to have fun, it seemed.

“I’ll have another,” he heard as he contemplated his next move.  He glanced over to the man who had spoken, the one sitting at the far end of the bar.  It was hard to tell in the dim lighting, but he looked completely wasted, swaying a little in his seat.

“Nuh-uh,” the bartender said, pouring a glass of water instead.  “I’m cutting you off for the night.  Drink a few of these, and then head on home, you hear?”

The man laughed humorlessly.  Something about the sound tugged at Dean, and he frowned.  That laugh- that bitterness- felt like it didn’t belong, somehow.  “Home.  Right,” the man said in his gravelly voice.  “That’s certainly a reasonable suggestion.”  He looked up for the first time, revealing fine-cut features dusted with a bit of stubble.  “Thank you for your kindness,” he told the bartender earnestly.  She looked a little taken aback at the sudden change in his tone, maybe even a little flustered.  Not that Dean blamed her.  Now that he could see the man properly, it surprised him that such a hot- um, attractive man was drinking himself half to death in a dive like this.  Even with his eyes hooded and bloodshot from the alcohol, he looked… really fucking good.  Especially with a voice that was practically straight out of a sex line.  A voice like that, with those looks, was enough to make Dean almost-

Dean blinked and looked back at his drink quickly.  He wasn’t sure where that thought came from or where it was going, but he did know that he never wanted it anywhere near his head again.  Ever.

He gestured for another double, gulping it down a little faster than he probably should.  He could feel the alcohol burning through his veins in earnest now, making the world swim and his heart pound with a rush of… something.  He swallowed and shifted in his seat.  If only whatever it was would just _stop_ , stop quivering in his gut, stop sending shivers down his spine like someone tracing lazy, featherlight patterns on his nerves and setting them on fire.  If this didn’t let up, he’d probably end up doing something he’d really regret.  At least there wasn’t much here for him to do, period.

He glanced up to look for the girl, but she was gone.  Damn.  Now there _really_ wasn’t anything to do.  Fucking small towns.  He was on the verge of crawling out of his own skin, with nothing to help relieve the tension.

He looked around the bar again despairingly, knowing that literally nothing had changed in the past five seconds but hopeful for a distraction nonetheless.  His eyes caught on the man nursing his water, and he nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of the thought that had occurred to him.  He was desperate for _something_ , but not _that_ desperate.  Besides, small hick towns in the middle of Kansas didn’t really foster the right kind of environment for sucking off a stranger in a back alley for a nice wad of cash.  He’d probably get sucker punched the moment he made his approach- although, come to think of it, a nice brawl might not be so bad.

The man took a sip of his water, staring off into the distance.  He looked like he needed a distraction just as much as Dean did.

_Bad idea_ , a voice whispered in the back of his head.  A voice that sounded suspiciously like Sam.  Specifically, it sounded like the Sam he didn’t know, the one still back at the bunker.  The one who was trying to smother him for his own good.  The one who seemed to think that just because Dean was twenty-six instead of thirty-six that he couldn’t take care of himself, when Dean had been taking care of _Sam_ since he was four years old.

Hell, he could take care of Sam right now if he wanted to.  Just like he’d done since he was fifteen and pretty enough that the closeted bastards were practically throwing themselves at him.  They might live in a fancy bunker now, but he’d seen the holes in Sam’s jeans, the threadbare look of his shirt.  He could take care of that, no fucking problem.

Dean knocked back the rest of his drink and stood.  The decision to do something grounded him, gave him back some of the bubbly happy feeling the alcohol had given him earlier.  He wasn’t some civilian kid, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.  And right now, he wanted to make some money and provide for his brother.

The room spun, enough that he had to grab the bar to keep from falling over.  But that didn’t stop him from making his way across the room to slide into the seat next to his drunken target.

The man glanced at him when he noticed someone was there.  His eyes didn’t quite focus on him, but whatever he was seeing made them widen, and made his tongue flick out to moisten his lips.  Good sign.

“You look like you’ve seen better days,” Dean remarked, gesturing at the bartender for another round for him and his new drinking buddy.  She raised her eyebrows at his change in location, but didn’t comment.

The man shrugged, looking back at his water.  “Not so sure ‘bout that,” he muttered, sipping from his glass.  He was far more wasted than he’d seemed from far away.  Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing, it was hard to tell.

Dean chuckled.  “Sounds familiar,” he said, subtly inching closer, giving the man a nice, innocent yet charming smile.  It was hard doing this the wrong way around: usually he was the one who got approached.  Well.  Desperate times, he supposed, letting his knee brush against the man’s.

The man shifted in his seat almost unconsciously, swallowing a little.  “Um,” he said, his voice cracking a little.  His eyes flickered toward Dean and then back at his glass.  “Bad day?” he said.

“Well, not as bad as yours, it looks like,” Dean said.  “But you know, I can think of a few ways that you and me can make tonight a little better, at least.  What do you say?”

The man blinked at his water.  For a long moment, Dean wondered if he’d even heard him.

Slowly, the man looked up from his drunken study of his glass to frown at him.  “What do you mean?”

Dean hesitated.  This guy was drunk.  Like seriously, majorly drunk, and that could be a problem.  Too drunk to actually appreciate a professional blow job, probably too drunk to even understand the business transaction at all.  Drunks were pretty unpredictable anyway, swinging from happy to angry to suicidal to violent in a single breath.

But hey, he was young, pretty drunk himself, and a little reckless.  Why the fuck _shouldn’t_ he go for it?

He leaned in closer.  The guy’s pupils dilated as Dean slid his hand down the man’s forearm.  “Well,” he said softly.  “That all depends.”

The man swallowed, eyes fixed on his hand.  “On what?”

Dean smiled, enjoying the feeling of a fish wriggling on his hook before reeling it in.  It wasn’t that he _liked_ turning tricks, exactly.  Obviously.  But really, what was the point in being morose about it?  Sometimes it felt good to be wanted, even if it was by some skeevy guy wolf-whistling at him in a dirty bar.  “On how much you’re willing to pay to let me suck you off in the back alley,” he murmured.

The man’s breath caught, and he looked up at Dean sharply.  But there was something in his eyes this time, something wary and confused floating around in the arousal.  “Do I… know you?” he asked, like he was afraid to know the answer.

Dean’s stomach twisted painfully.  Shit.  No way that was a good sign.

He forced a laugh.  “Not yet,” he said, leaning a little closer.

The man’s eyes widened as he looked at him, _really_ looked at him.  He swallowed, like he was seeing Dean for the first time, and also for the millionth time.  Definitely not good.

“Dean?” the man whispered.

Fuck.

Dean opened his mouth to say something, anything, but fuck if he could think of anything to fix this.  Whoever this guy was, he knew Dean, and that meant trouble.  A fuckton of trouble.  Shit shit shit.

A phone ringing broke the shocked silence between the two of them.  The man fumbled drunkenly for it, still staring at Dean.

“Hello? … Yeah, Sam, I know.  I’m looking right at him.”


	3. I'm on a Losing Streak

_When I'm ridin' round the world_  
 _And I'm doin' this and I'm signing that_  
 _And I'm tryin' to make some girl_  
 _Who tells me baby better come back later next week_  
 _Cause you see I'm on a losing streak_

           -"I Can't Get No Satisfaction," The Rolling Stones

 

* * *

 

 

The air in the car was stifling, and not just because Sam refused to roll down a window to cool off the embers boiling in Dean’s veins.  There was no light in the car except what passing streetlights reflected in, and even those got fewer and fewer in between as they left the small town and drove into the blank spaces of nighttime.  The road appeared suddenly under the Impala’s headlights, and disappeared just as quickly under her tires, endlessly going on and on without changing, movement without ever really moving anywhere.

Nobody said a word, which was fine by him.  Dean could live without hearing the lecture he could see brewing in Sam’s eyes, the kind of storm that you had to hide from in tornado shelters and reinforced bunkers.  Not to mention the stranger sitting in the backseat and the potential for gut churning awkwardness if he opened his mouth to say anything; after what had happened at the bar, Dean would be happy if he never saw the guy again.

So what if the tension was so thick the Dean could feel it slowly strangling him.  At least he wasn’t sitting through some bitch fest between him, his sister of a brother, and some would-be mark who was tagging along for some inexplicable reason.  So what if he was still buzzing with that same jittery energy that made his hands shake and his skin crawl.  So what if that energy was making the tension worse and worse, his nerve endings already frayed enough to deal with the angry lightning building in Sam’s eyes.  So what if the whole world just felt _wrong_ , and he had no idea how to fix it.

The tempest broke the instant they were at the bottom of the stairs in the bunker.  So much for shelter from the storm, Dean thought wryly as Sam took his jacket off and threw it onto the table with unnecessary violence.

He couldn’t hang on to the cavalier attitude when Sam rounded on him, bristling with anger.  Dean took a step back despite himself: the older version of Sammy was a lot bigger and more intimidating that the one Dean remembered.  Especially with all of that fury focused squarely on Dean.

“Have you lost your mind, or are you really that goddamn stupid?” Sam snarled at him.  “What the hell were you thinking?  You get hit by some spell that turns you into a kid again and we have _no fucking clue_ what else it does, and you decide, hey, this is a good time to sneak out and go _drinking?_ ”

“Alright, alright,” Dean said, taking another step back.  Pretty soon he was going to run out of room, and be forced either to crane his neck to look up at his terrifying younger brother, or walk up the stairs backwards like an idiot.  “Jeez, don’t get your panties in a twist.  As you can see, I’m perfectly fine, no harm done.”  He made a show of rolling his eyes.  “Which makes sense, since I’m not a _kid_ ,” he added.  “I can take care of myself, you don’t have to baby me.”

“Really?  You could have fooled me.”  Sam pushed his hands through his hair, clearly trying to calm down a little.  “Dean, whoever cursed you is still out there, and odds are they have it out for you,” Sam told him, frustration still clipping his words harshly.

Dean frowned.  “What makes you think they’re after _me_?” he asked.

“Because the hunt that got us into that factory in the first place was a trap,” Sam snapped.  “Those missing persons we were chasing don’t even exist if you dig far enough.  Someone went through a lot of trouble to get us where they wanted us, and we walked right in there without ever suspecting a thing.  So yeah, I think it’s a pretty good bet that if you walk around with an ‘attack me’ sign taped to your back, that same person is going to notice and take advantage of that.”  He sighed, his tone leveling a little.  “The best thing we can do for now is to lie low, and see what we can figure out about what exactly happened.  We need to know what we’re dealing with here, so we can be on our guard when we hunt this son of a bitch down.”

Dean snorted.  “Yeah, great plan,” he said.  “I’m sure that just sitting around on our heels will be totally productive and not useless at all.”  Jesus, it was hard to think with this fucking buzzing under his skin and in his head and screaming at him about being responsible.  Anger fizzed in his veins along with it- of course Sam hadn’t thought to tell him about all this _earlier_ , that would be far too much information for his delicate state of mind.  The anger, at least, made the restless energy a little more bearable.  His skin still felt too tight, but at least there was a fire in the pit of his stomach to distract him.  “You know what the _actually_ useful plan would be?” he said, not even trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.  “If we went out there and actually hunted for the asshole who cursed me.  And if something tries to kill us, we just kill it instead.  It’s pretty fucking simple, really.”

“Yeah, and what happens to you if we do that?” Sam asked, aiming for reasonable and missing the mark by a few miles.  “What happens if you get stuck like this, or get de-aged to a ten year old, or a _fetus_ or something?  Can you use your brain for one fucking second?”

Dean bristled, and it wasn’t what Sam was saying that stoked that fire.  He knew he shouldn’t have gone out, should have lain low and done some research to find out what was going on- but it wasn’t like he needed _Sam_ of all people to take care of _him_.  Sam, who had abandoned him when all he’d been trying to do was keep their family from breaking apart.  Sam, whose diapers he’d changed, dinners he’d cooked, scrapes and bruises he’d bandaged, nightmares he’d soothed.  Sam, of all people.  “Thanks for your advice, _dad_ ,” he spat.  “Any other gems you’d like to pass on to the next generation?  Stay in school?  Don’t do drugs, look both ways before you cross the street?”

Sam opened his mouth to retort, anger flashing in his eyes once again, but the stranger from the bar stepped between them suddenly.  Dean had all but forgotten that he was there, he’d been so caught up in his frustration with Sam.  “Calm down, both of you,” the man said, his eyes flicking uneasily between the two of them.  “You don’t want to say anything you might regret later.”  He looked at Dean as he said it, as if trying to communicate something more with just the intensity of his blue eyes.  The guy still swaying under the effects of all the alcohol he’d consumed was trying to lecture Dean on the importance of being responsible.

That was the last fucking straw.  “Oh yeah?  And who the fuck are you then, huh?” he shouted, shoving the man away from him.  “Because it seems to me that you’re just some pathetic, drunken asshole who doesn’t fucking know me, and needs to stay out of other people’s goddamn business!”

The bunker was silent for a long moment as Dean’s words echoed around them and settled over them like a stifling blanket.  The man stared at him wide-eyed, his expression slowly shifting from shock to horror to… something that Dean vehemently hoped wasn’t heartbreak, because that would be too fucking much.  “You… you don’t know me?” the man whispered.

Sam swallowed.  “The spell affected his memory too, Cas,” he said quietly.

The man- Cas?- blinked, and then nodded slowly, his face a blank mask that squeezed painfully at something inside Dean’s gut.  “I see,” he said.  “I… I’ll just…”  He turned abruptly and walked down the hall towards the bedrooms.  From what Dean could see of his face, it looked like he was going to be sick.

All the anger lighting a fire inside Dean drained away, leaving nothing but a roiling stomach and that stupid fucking buzzing dancing on his bones.  He opened his mouth to call after the guy, maybe to apologize, maybe just to ask who he was, but nothing came out.  He was long gone by now anyway.

“Jesus,” Sam said.  “You’re an even bigger asshole that I remember.”  He sighed and looked at Dean reproachfully.  “That’s Cas, alright?” he told him.  “He’s your best friend- your _only_ friend, really.  I can’t even start to explain all the shit you two have been through together.  How many times he’s saved your sorry ass, stuck by you, given up everything for you.”  Sam huffed a laugh, turning away to follow Cas down the hall.  “You know what, forget it.  If you want to be a self-destructive idiot, that’s your choice.  I’m not going to stop you.”

He walked out of sight without another word, leaving Dean alone in the vast, empty room.  Nothing to keep him company except the knowledge that Sam was right.  He really was an asshole.  An idiot.

A failure.

***

_There’s a piercing whine that fills the air, fills his bones, shatters glass in a run-down gas station.  He tries to scream but his voice is lost in forty years spent lying six feet under- no one would think to give him_ that _back, not after all he’s done._

_Dad leans forward as the whine builds to a shriek and the smell of sulphur wafts over him in a wave, in flames that carve like razors, blood spilling on the floor in intricate designs._

_What do you want from me?_

_The whine rumbles and shrieks and roars.  Dad’s lips move but the words are lost in the wave of sulphur, of fire, of knives, of screams.  His lips move and Dean can’t hear him, won’t hear him, runs from the words he knows he must obey._

_Sir yes sir. (please)_

_Look after Sammy._

_Sir yes sir. (I can’t)_

_You have to save him._

_Sir yes sir. (don’t say it)_

_Because if you don’t-_

_The windows of the gas station shatter and blood pours from his ears and a cold fire burns through his body.  Starlight wraps around his bones, he’s screaming but still the only thing he can hear is a soft whispered “Yes.”_

 


	4. Fresh as the Bright Blue Sky

_ She's got a smile that it seems to me _   
_Reminds me of childhood memories_   
_Where everything_   
_Was as fresh as the bright blue sky_

_ Now and then when I see her face _   
_She takes me away to that special place_   
_And if I stared too long_   
_I'd probably break down and cry_

             - "Sweet Child O' Mine," Guns N' Roses

 

* * *

 

 

Dean wandered aimlessly through the bunker, staring at the walls without really seeing them.  His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton laced with lead and teeming with squirming insects- the lovely results of combining whiskey with a nightmare riddled night along with the after effects of a de-aging spell.  All in all, a fan-fucking-tastic combination.

The halls stretched endlessly in front of him, it seemed like.  He’d been wandering for long enough that at this point he was probably lost.  He just couldn’t really muster up the energy to care.

The clatter of a pot broke through his stupor, along with the tantalizing smell of coffee.  That could be what he’d been looking for this whole time without even thinking about it.  Maybe.   He rubbed his eyes and followed his nose to the kitchen.

He heard voices just before rounding a corner.  He paused, considering.  The smell of coffee was doing almost as good a job of waking him up as the real thing, and there was no point in bursting in there when he might actually learn something about what’s going on.  Sam would be pissed if he caught him eavesdropping, but then again, Sam didn’t really need to find out, did he.

“-deserves to know, Sam.”  The voice was gravelly and only familiar if Dean poked at the whiskey-sodden events of last night.  Cas, then.  He sounded steady and sure without alcohol tripping his tongue.

“It’s not about that,” Sam said.  He sounded tired and worn- but maybe that was just how his voice sounded all the time now, with ten long years to burden him.  “Look, for all intents and purposes, he’s twenty-six now.  Dean at twenty-six could barely cope with me getting out of the life.  How do you think he’ll cope with the rest of this crap?  How do you think he’ll cope with _you_?”

There was a rustle of fabric, maybe from Cas shifting in response to the question.  “You’re deflecting,” he said bluntly.  “It may not be about whether or not Dean deserves to know, but it’s not about how he’ll take it either.  It’s about you wanting to keep him in the dark so that _you_ don’t have to deal with the fallout of everything that’s happened.  You’re taking advantage of his innocence.”

“Can you blame me?” Sam asked.  “There’s so much that I’ve…  I mean, Ruby, the cage, the whole _year_ where I just ran away while you two were…”  He sighed.  “And that’s not even touching on all the shit in the last year alone,” he continued, more quietly now.  “Gadreel was bad enough, but then everything with Crowley and the First Blade…  I just…  I don’t see the point in making it harder for us to figure out what’s going on because Dean is freaking out over all of it.  And yeah, it’s kinda nice not to have to think about the past ten years.  You can understand that, right?”

Cas was silent for a moment.  Dean held his breath, the unfamiliar words turning around and around in his head, fueling the anger once again coiling in his gut.  Ruby, Gadreel, Crowley?   _What the hell were they hiding from him?_

“I- I suppose I can,” Cas said eventually.  “There are certainly some things that I…”  He paused, taking a ragged breath.  “As long as we tell him what he needs to know, and we do everything in our power to break the curse, I don’t see any harm in… in… in spending time with Dean, without the past in the way.”  There was another pause, and then Cas murmured, “Not that he’ll want me around either way.”

“Cas…” Sam began, but he didn’t follow it up with anything.

A throb of guilt joined the anger boiling in Dean’s veins.  He shouldn’t have yelled at Cas last night, even if he was a stranger.  It wasn’t right that with a just a few words, he’d managed to make someone he didn’t even know sound so broken.  It was his special talent, it seemed.  Just one touch was all it took, and he could send the world crashing down around him.

“Maybe I should go, Sam,” Cas said.  His voice cracked.  “I can’t do anything to help, not now that I’m…  And Dean never wanted me to stay, even when he had his memories.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” Sam told him firmly.  “He gave you a bedroom for God’s sake, do you really think he didn’t want you to use it?  Besides, you can’t leave me alone to deal with all this.  We’re a team, right?”

Cas huffed a laugh.  “No Sam, I won’t abandon you to deal with your brother.  That would be asking a little too much from both you and Dean.”

“Thanks,” Sam said dryly.  Dean could hear a thread of relief hidden under the humor.

The lapsed into silence.  Dean’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that as good as coffee smelled, it tasted even better, especially when paired with food.  He took a deep breath to calm the sparks grating across his nervous system, and sauntered into the kitchen like he hadn’t heard anything at all.

“Morning,” he said cheerfully.  His own voice hurt his head, but he went on anyway.  “Got anything to feed a growing boy?”  He flashed them both a smirk.

“I think you can figure it out,” Sam said, a tiny bite in his tone turning it into a retort.  Oddly, Dean found himself relaxing a little at the sound.  Sam wasn’t trying to pick a fight this time; this was just good old fashioned sibling teasing.  The kind he would never admit to having missed these past few years.  It was almost like old times.

“Bitch,” he scoffed at his younger brother.

Sam just rolled his eyes and turned back to his mug of coffee.

Almost.  Almost like old times.

He glanced over at Cas as he poured himself a bowl of cereal.  The other man was reading the newspaper, his forehead furrowed and all his attention focused studiously on the editorial section of some backwoods daily news.  A little too studiously, really.  He didn’t quite have the whole act down: as intently as he was looking at the paper, his eyes were completely still.

Dean gulped down some coffee.  If Sam had been telling the truth last night- which was apparently a big if- then this rumpled, scruffy man was Dean’s best friend in the world these days.  Dean had never really had one of those before.  All he’d ever had were Dad and Sam; best friends didn’t really work out in this line of business.  He didn’t even really know what it meant to be someone’s friend, although he was certainly doing a bang-up job of it right now.  He’d known the guy for less than twelve hours, and he’d already managed to piss him off.

Oh, right.  Piss him off _and_ accidentally proposition him.  This was off to a great start.

“So,” he said, right as his train of thought began to wander into the realization that the dim lighting  of the bar and Dean’s drunken appraisal hadn’t done Cas’ good looks nearly enough justice.  Even hungover and bleary-eyed, he looked like a debauched god- one with slightly goofy-looking ears, granted- and with his hair tousled and fucked up like that, he really looked on just the right side of sinful-

Okay, woah, definitely a train he needed to derail right the fuck now.

“I was thinking,” he continued, moving his gaze back to Sam.  Whatever weird-ass shit this spell had done to his brain, at least Sam seemed safe to look at.  Thank God.  “We should do some research today in that big-ass library you’ve got there.  There’s gotta be something about de-aging spells in there, right?”

Surprise flitted across Sam’s face.  “ _You_ want to do research?” he asked.

“What else is there to do?  It’s the best way to get rid of this curse, right?” Dean said with a shrug.

Sam nodded, still looking a bit bemused.  “Alright, research it is then.”

Dean smiled and nodded along with him.  Research wasn’t a bad idea at all, when you got right down to it.  After all, in this huge library of books and records, there were sure to be journals and notes and all kinds of clues that could tell Dean exactly what it was that Sam and Cas didn’t want him to know.

***

Research, as it turned out, was a terrible idea.

Or at least, it was a pointless, boring idea.  While Sam and Cas dug through the extensive library to find anything that mentioned de-aging spells, Dean flipped through the books more randomly, casually, looking in vain for the answers that Sam wouldn’t give him.

The problem was that he had no idea what he was even looking for- which was kind of the point.  So it wasn’t really that he was looking for a needle in a haystack so much as he was looking for one particular piece of hay that looked exactly like all the rest, and all the while trying to _seem_ like he was looking for the needle.  Which was about as far as he was going to take that particular metaphor, since the whole experience was making his head ache even worse than when he first woke up, and metaphors weren’t exactly pain relievers.

He leafed through journal after journal, all of them ancient, all of them useless.  Just like the machinery and architecture of this place, everything here was fifty years old or older, adding yet another layer to this goddamn mystery.

The only luck he had was a single line in one of the older journals, marked with a pair of wings and nothing else.  The contents were equally enigmatic, just pages and pages of names with a short description.   _Anael, of love, passion, and sexuality.  Israfil, of the third Heaven, the burning one.  Mihr, of September and divine mercy.  Ouriel, who commands demons.  Cassiel, of Saturn and Thursday.  Raphael, of healing, the shining one._  On and on the list went, in no order that Dean could decipher, and no meaning that he could figure out either.  He was about to close the book and put it away when he saw it.

_Gadreel, fallen helper of the fifth heaven, who let the serpent into the Garden._

Dean frowned, tracing his fingers over the entry.  Gadreel- maybe the Gadreel that Sam mentioned earlier.  The rest of it… biblical, what with the heaven and the serpent talk.  The only supernatural assholes that ran with all that biblical crap were demons, as far as Dean knew.  But that was usually in the abstract, exorcisms and holy water and all that.  They weren’t _actually_ biblical creatures, not with God and angels and a literal garden of eden.  So what did it mean, ‘ _who let the serpent into the Garden’_ , if it wasn’t a literal garden?

He flipped through the journal, scouring it for more information, but he stopped on the very last page, looking at the last entry uneasily.

_Lucifer, father of demons, bearer of light._

He slammed the book shut abruptly, feeling queasy and frustrated and bored all at once.  There was nothing in that book anyway, just a bunch of dead ends.

The books were useless, and he gave up on the vague notion of researching online when Sam’s (much sleeker than he was used to) computer rejected his attempted password for the tenth time.  Instead he got up and wandered away, too irritated to do anything other than glance at the dusty spines of hunter’s manuals.

After a while, he found himself meandering through the halls of the bunker, moving away from the library where Sam and Cas were paging through an infinite number of books.  The halls were long, chaotic, unpredictable, and he wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, of if they really were changing positions.  The bunker was shockingly large in any case, most of it underground, hidden from view.  Hence the lack of windows.  Maybe that was why it felt so much like a cage.

He ran his hand along the tile wall as he walked.  No point in just wandering around.  He might as well do some snooping while he was at it, out here where Sam couldn’t look over his shoulder.

He started opening doors at random, too weary to be systematic about it.  Most of them revealed storage rooms of all kinds- some filled with rows and rows of file cabinets, some with curse-boxes and strange artifacts that he didn’t dare touch, and some with nothing in them at all.  Not that he could see, anyway.  Most of the rooms looked like they hadn’t been disturbed in decades.

All the bedrooms were in much the same condition.  Dust collecting on bare bed frames.  Spiderwebs clinging to every available surface.  Mold growing in the corners.  Whatever the story was with this place, it stretched over years and years.

All the bedrooms, except for one.  The door at the end of the row was cracked open slightly, casting a line of light along the floor, and the doorknob was shiny from recent use.  He paused, looking around at the suddenly familiar hallway- his own bedroom was just around the corner.  This was probably Sam’s room then, so close to Dean’s that they would probably be able to hear each other through the shared wall.  Dean knew how hard it was to sleep when he couldn’t hear his brother snoring nearby; he would have made sure that their bedrooms were close.

He smirked and pushed open the door.  Snooping around Sam’s room was bound to be more productive than wandering aimlessly around.

His shoulders slumped when he saw what was inside.  It was just another bedroom almost exactly like the others.  It only differed in the cleanliness of the furniture, the slightly rumpled sheets on the otherwise neatly-made bed, a tan overcoat tossed on the back of a chair.  There were no other personal touches, not even in the neatly folded clothing in the dresser (and since when was Sam such a neat-freak anyway?).  Nothing to indicate that anyone actually lived here, rather than just passing through.  Nothing to indicate what had happened in the ten years that Dean had lost, either.

He sighed and turned away.  Maybe he should just give up and take a nap.

A light glinting into his eye stopped him.  He glanced around, frowning.  He hadn’t seen anything that would reflect light, but…  He crouched down next to the bed and found it, something long, thin, and metallic half-hidden in the shadows.  It looked like it had fallen out of the folds of the jacket and rolled away.  He pulled it out from under the bed and held it up to the-

_Light flares around him, shrieking too loud, too loud, his ears are bleeding with it.  He’s standing in a gas station, in a motel, in a barn, in a field.  He’s standing wreathed in fire and there’s a hand clasped around his arm, he can’t see, can’t hear, can’t speak, trapped in a whirlwind of burning grace-_

He dropped it with a gasp.  The room slowly swam back into focus, his eyes watering like he’d been staring into the sun, his chest heaving like he’d run twenty miles.  His ears were still ringing from the echoes of the phantom shriek- but he was just standing in the bunker.  Safe.

What.  The.  Hell.

He reached out and touched the shiny metal once more, and nothing happened.  It had been… just a trick of the light, or something, an after-effect of the curse.  Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t dangerous in and of itself.

He picked it up again gingerly and examined it.  It appeared to be a long, silver blade- but it was the weirdest sword that Dean had ever seen.  The edges were angular in a way that almost didn’t seem practical.  The metal itself was odd, so light in his hands that he barely felt it, and yet so strong and sharp that he accidentally drew blood when he ran his finger gently along the edge.  The droplet of blood flowed slowly down the blade, swirling in little patterns in the metal that he couldn’t see with his naked eye.

“Dean?”

He spun around, dropping the blade on the bed guiltily.  “Cas, hey,” he said, keeping his voice casual and light.  Cas was standing in the doorway, hand still on the doorknob.

Not Sam’s room after all.  Cas’ room.  Of course.

“What are you doing?” Cas asked.  His eyes flicked down to the blade on the bed.  But if he thought anything of its obvious change in location, he showed no sign of it.

Dean shrugged.  “Figured I wouldn’t be much use with research, since Sam’s kinda the brainiac anyway, so I thought I’d explore a little bit.”

Cas squinted, and for some reason it made Dean uncomfortable.  It felt a little bit like Cas was trying to see into his soul.  “In my bedroom,” he clarified.

“Oh shit,” Dean said, looking around.  “Sorry, man, I didn’t-”

“It’s fine,” Cas told him.  “I know you didn’t know.”  He followed Dean’s gaze around the bare bedroom, but his expression was still inscrutable.

“Right.”  Dean shifted as silence fell between them.  It was more than a little awkward- actually, scratch that, it was just plain fucking weird.  He glanced at Cas, only to find the other man looking intently at the wall.  What was he supposed to say to this stranger who was supposedly his friend, and oh yeah, who he accidentally propositioned and then insulted last night?  What a fucking mess.

“I’ll just-”

“Dean-”

They both stopped, waiting for the other to continue.  When Cas remained silent, Dean laughed and rubbed the back of his neck.  “Look man, about last night, at… at the bar-”

Cas’ eyes widened in what might have been panic.  “Don’t worry about it,” he said quickly.

Dean cleared his throat, looking down at the ground.  “Yeah, but it’s just that…  I’m not actually- I don’t, uh…”

Cas held up a hand to stop him.  “Dean, I know.  You don’t need to explain.  You do it to provide for Sam, right?”

Dean gaped at him, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be embarrassed and awkward about this.  “You _know_?”  He swallowed.  It was one thing to make a drunken fool of himself.  It was another thing entirely to be this vulnerable to a stranger, with who knows how many secrets exposed.  “Jesus, does _Sam_ know?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Cas said with a slight frown.  “You told me in Pur-”  He coughed and changed whatever he’d started to say.  “You told me in confidence,” he continued.  “Unless you’ve changed your mind about telling him in the past two years, I doubt he knows anything about it.”

Dean nodded, trying to hide the sharp wave of relief flooding him.  “Right.  Good.”  He cleared his throat again, shifted his weight, and abruptly turned to leave again.  “I’ll just-” he muttered, gesturing uselessly toward the door.  “Sorry again for… yeah,” he said as he passed the other man.  He could feel Cas watching him as he moved away, though Dean didn’t turn to see his expression.

He paused in the doorway anyway, curiosity burning under his skin along with all the after effects of the de-aging spell.  “Hey Cas?”

“Hm?”  Cas was frowning again as he dragged his eyes away from whatever distance he’d been gazing into.  Dean had to wonder if that frown was a permanent fixture on his face.

“Sam said that we’re… friends?”

Cas blinked.  He looked down at his hands, as if surprised to find that his fingers were twisting around each other.  “Yes, we are,” he said quietly.  There was something sad and weirdly ancient in his eyes, as if he’d lived for centuries and seen too many horrible and wonderful things in all that time to forget.  He hadn’t, of course.  He was just a man, somewhere in his thirties, standing alone in the center of a bare bedroom.

“Why?” Dean asked.  He didn’t want to accuse him or insult him, but the curiosity was too much to hold in.  Nothing about this man seemed like anything that would bring the two of them together- and yet the version of Dean with all his memories had told him about turning tricks, had given him the bedroom right next to his.  It didn’t make any sense, in the same way that none of this made any sense.

A sad smile flitted across Cas’ face.  “I suppose there are some things that can’t be endured without a friend,” he said quietly, and he closed the door with a soft click.

 


	5. Dreams of You All Through My Head

_I gotta roll, can't stand still,_   
_got a flaming heart, can't get my fill_   
_Eyes that shine burning red,_   
_dreams of you all through my head._

            -"Black Dog," Led Zeppelin

 

* * *

 

 

The day went by so slowly that Dean could almost swear that time was moving backwards.  He’d already collapsed a few hours ago in front of the TV stashed in a repurposed storeroom.  The endless turning pages and oppressive quiet in the library had slowly been crushing his will to live; nothing like a little mindless television to get him out of a funk.

Of course, zoning out while watching cartoons was great in theory, but it fell a little flat when it turned out that he didn’t recognize any of the shows or movies that were on.  It was impossible to follow anything that was happening, and the reminder that nothing was as it should be was enough to make the whole experience more stressful that he would like.

This was ridiculous.  He grabbed the remote, ready to turn the TV off and go for a drive no matter what Sam said.  No way in hell was he sticking around in here all day.

“You don’t like this program?”

Dean jumped, nearly falling off the worn leather couch.  He hadn’t heard Cas approach, which was either impressive or slightly worrying.

Cas didn’t seem to have noticed Dean’s surprise.  He was frowning at the TV, and yeah, Dean was pretty sure at this point that the whole frown-and-squint thing was a universal constant.

“Jesus, dude, don’t sneak up like that,” Dean said.  Cas blinked, a small smile tugging at his lips.

“Apologies,” he said gravely, although he was still smiling.  He talked like he was fresh out of some snobby university, despite his scruffy appearance.  For the life of him, Dean couldn’t figure him out.  “I thought that you enjoyed-” Cas squinted at the screen- “medical dramas.”

Dean raised his eyebrows at the TV.  The production value was shitty, the actors would have been better off if they were replaced by cardboard cutouts, and what Dean could follow of the story was so convoluted and ridiculous that he had a hard time imagining _anyone_ enjoying this crap."Dude, no," he said."This is like the shittiest of the already shitty daytime TV shows.I'm only watching 'cause there's nothing else on."He glanced at Cas and slid over to make room on the couch."If you wanna choose something, feel free," he said, tossing the remote over.

After flipping through channels somewhat endlessly, they finally ended up watching the bad medical drama anyway- mostly because as it turned out, Cas knew quite a lot about medicine and hospital procedure, and wasn't afraid to make snide comments about the accuracy.

"That operating room is far too dark for those surgeons to see what they're doing," he said, frowning at the screen, where two doctors were currently in a heated staring match while the poor dude on the table was coding.

"Yeah, but it makes it more dramatic," Dean pointed out."That's the important part."

Cas huffed."I would think that a man undergoing open heart surgery would be dramatic enough," he muttered.He looked surprised when Dean burst out laughing at his expression.

"That needle hasn't been sterilized, they're going to give this man an infection," he said just a few minutes later.

Cas also explained, in depth, why it was that the entire conflict revolving around a would-be transplant patient shooting his doctors wouldn't happen because the patient would have been dead by now anyway, and besides, it didn't make sense that they had to perform brain surgery on the doctor who was shot since the bullet had clearly hit his leg, not his head, thus making the drama around who would operate on the resident brain surgeon obsolete, and yeah, Dean hadn't laughed this hard in a long time.

It was only when his stomach rumbled three episodes later that he realized he wasn't really bored or antsy anymore- in fact, he felt oddly lightheaded and warm, better than he'd felt ever since waking up in that factory.He no longer wondered why he would be friends with Cas; now all he wanted to know was whether or not he'd be able to make Cas laugh for real, rather than just smile softly in amusement.

He ignored the flutter in his stomach when he finally did manage it.It was probably just another after-effect of the de-aging spell, after all.

***

The factory was big, dirty, and completely empty.It had clearly been abandoned for years, and in all that time anything that could be moved had already been cleared away.The only hint that it wasn't as disused as it appeared was the floor: there wasn't a speck of dust on it, nowhere a footprint or scuff could alert a hunter of a predator hiding in the shadows.

"So, why are we all here again?" Dean asked, tightening his grip on the gun.

Sam shot him an irritated look."I told you, the source I found says there are a crapload of different versions of the spell, so we have to narrow it down.Find out what kind of ritual was used.Which means tracking down where the ritual was performed."

Dean rolled his eyes as he peered around a broken, abandoned piece of machinery still bolted to the ground."Yeah, I heard you the first hundred times," he said."I meant, why are all three of us looking around together?We could cover a hell of a lot more ground if we split up."He raised his eyebrows at Sam and Cas.Maybe they'd gotten senile in their old age or something, because this was pretty much Hunting 101.

A look flashed between the two of them.Dean's heart sank.This was another protect-helpless-little-Dean moment, wasn't it.

He should have expected it, but he'd forgotten how goddamn irritating this all was after spending the afternoon joking around with Cas.The "grown-ups" had decided that Dean wasn't capable of taking care of himself, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do to change that.

"Look, Dean," Sam said, in what was rapidly becoming Dean's least favorite tone of voice, the one where Sam tried to sound reasonable instead of utterly condescending."The world has... changed a lot since 2005, and I can't even really begin to explain it all to you, so just trust me, okay?I'd just feel better if we stuck together.Safety in numbers and all that."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean muttered."Jesus, you'd think this was the apocalypse or something, the way you've been acting."

They went over the factory slowly, despite all the wide open spaces where assembly lines and machines used to be.There were still a surprising number of hiding spots behind corners, tucked under crumbling walls or neglected machinery; and while Dean still maintained that he could easily have survived walking through an abandoned factory alone, he had to admit that the whole place was pretty fucking eerie.

"Here!" Cas said after nearly an hour.He crouched down near a doorway, through which Dean could see a spattered, faded trail of blood leading from the center of the room all the way to their feet.He looked down quickly, weirdly uneasy about seeing the room where he'd woken up just yesterday.

There was barely anything left of the spell, just scuffed out symbols written in chalk and a few drops of blood.Dean knelt down as well, his shoulder brushing against Cas' as he leaned in to look.The symbols looked strangely familiar, even though he could swear he'd never seen anything like them before in his life.His stomach turned as he examined them, nausea building the longer he looked.It was a little like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, or at a funhouse mirror- just enough to send the world spinning.He yanked his eyes away, and the dizziness faded into the background once again.

"That's Enochian," Cas murmured to Sam.

Sam's eyes widened.He glanced at Dean and cleared his throat loudly."Hey Dean, could you grab the book that's in the trunk of the Impala?We're gonna need it."

Dean frowned, but didn't argue.He did, however, notice the worried look that passed between Sam and Cas.Whatever was going on here, they knew more than they were letting on.

There wasn't a book in sight when he opened the trunk.

"Son of a bitch," Dean snapped.Maybe Sam had left the book somewhere else in the car, or maybe he'd forgotten it back at the bunker."Or maybe he's a lying asshole," Dean muttered, kicking one of the Impala's tires lightly.

"Dean?Dean Winchester, is... is that you?"

His gun was up and pointed at the girl before he even registered consciously that someone had spoken.She held up her hands in surprise, eyeing him nervously."Woah there, easy cowboy," she said."No big bad over here, just a fellow hunter."

He looked her over without lowering his gun.She was tall, blonde, and beautiful; by the way she held herself, it looked like she knew it, too.On the other hand, she was dressed practically, no frills, bells, or whistles except for the knife sticking out of her boot and the gun in her waistband.Her stance said she knew how to use both if need be.

"Do I know you, sweetheart?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow."You _are_ Dean Winchester, right?I'd know that mug anywhere- although I'm pretty sure you looked about ten years older last time I saw you."Her eyes fell on Dean's tightening grip around the gun."We worked a case together a couple of months back, you really don't remember?"

Dean shrugged and gave her a tight smile."Sorry.The spell that made me all pretty again took some of the details away too.You wanna refresh my memory?"

"Not much to refresh," she said with a shrug of her own."Vengeful spirit out in Flagstaff, turned out to be two vengeful spirits trying to pick a fight with each other, so you, me, Sam, and your... uh, friend, we tag teamed them until they were ashes."

Dean didn't miss the way her tone changed on the word friend, suddenly simmering with dislike and mistrust."My friend- you mean Cas?" he asked carefully.

There was no mistaking the look of disgust that passed over her face at the name."Castiel.Right."

Castiel?No wonder the guy went by Cas instead.

The girl shook her head."Anyway.I was gonna check out the missing persons case 'round these parts, but I guess you guys beat me to it, huh?Lemme know if you need another pair of hands.Or knives."She turned to leave.Dean lowered his gun slightly, but stayed on guard.

She paused as she walked away, indecision flashing over her face.Finally she glanced back at him."You're still hunting with Castiel?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess," he said.

She hesitated again."It's none of my business really, but...You should watch your back around him.He's not what he says he is."

Dean frowned."What do you mean?"

"Dean?"Sam was calling for him, probably to make sure he hadn't stubbed his toe or something.Maybe he and Cas had finished their super secret discussion that they didn't want Dean to hear, and were wondering if he'd run off again.He glanced back at the factory, then back at the girl- but she was gone.

Well, that was ominous.

***

_He runs._

_He runs and runs and fights and runs.There's blood flowing through his hands and some of it is his, but he has to keep running._

_He has to find Cas._

_"He doesn't know anything," the man drawls, flashing fangs dripping with blood.It isn't his blood._

_"This is going to be so much fun."It isn't his Cas._

_Find him find him find him find him_

_There's a blade of bone in his hand.There are two blades of bone in his hands, and one of them sings while the other condemns.There's a blade of bone in his hand.He slides it through bodies and monsters and blood (find him find him find him) and he runs and he runs and runs.The sound of wings catches him, he chases them, bleeds his broken prayers onto the ground but they're gone._

_The hand clasped in his pushes him away.He's all alone and he can't run anymore.He can't fly after the wings and he's drowning, drowning in black ooze that seeps into his skin and traps him in place and he can't run anymore, can't run can't.There's a bloody trench coat in the water, and a hand pushing him through the light all alone, all alone, all alone._

_"Cas!"_

Dean sat bolt upright in bed, his throat raw from shouting Cas' name.His whole body shook with the absolute certainty that Cas was gone, that Cas had disappeared right in front of his eyes, that Cas was dying, was dead, was lost forever.

His stomach lurched, and he barely made it to the sink before he was violently sick.

He leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, pressing his clammy skin against the cool porcelain.The aftermath of the dream swept through him, leaving him shaking and gasping at the sound of phantom wings.He looked around, but there was nothing.The room was empty except for his own ragged breaths.He was alone.

His stomach was still roiling, but he lurched to his feet anyway, swaying unsteadily into the doorframe.Panic pounded through him with every heartbeat, propelling him forward.

He had to find Cas.

He tried not to pound on Cas' door too loudly, but it was hard enough not to kick it down altogether.The space between his first knock and the slow turn of the doorknob stretched into an eternity, one were Cas was drowning, was disintegrating, was bleeding, was gone.

"Dean?"

He took a deep breath, the panic easing into a background thrum and a bitter aftertaste as he took in the sight of Cas standing in the doorway with a sleep-muddled expression.He looked even more disheveled than usual, and his voice was low and rough in ways that Dean didn't want to dwell on.

"What's wrong?" Cas asked when Dean didn't respond.

"I..." Dean said, but the words stuck in his throat.There was no reasonable explanation for why he was shaking in the hallway in front of Cas' door- or at least, nothing less humiliating than _I had a nightmare and needed to know that you were okay_.He swallowed and tried again."I thought you had-"

What- disappeared, died, forgotten, disappeared, pushed away, run away, died?Dean didn't even know what he was thinking, lost in a swirl of half-remembered dreams and jumbled emotions.

Cas frowned."Maybe you'll feel better if you go back to sleep," he said gently.

Dean let out a breath in a woosh."Yeah," he said.

They stood staring at each other for a long time, neither one of them moving.Finally Cas blinked and put his hand on the door."Well, goodnight," he said.He moved to shut the door and once again disappear from Dean's sight.

"Wait," Dean said, his heart pounding again.Cas paused in surprise, but Dean didn't have anything more to say except _Don't leave me_.He cleared his throat."Can I hang out in here for a bit?"

Cas hesitated, glancing back inside the room, but he nodded anyway."Of course."He held the door open a little wider to let Dean in.Dean swallowed as he brushed past him; he could feel Cas' body heat through the thin material of the other man's pajamas, and for some reason that distracted him even from the remaining swirls of nightmare induced panic.

He stood in the middle of the sparse room, trying and failing to think of anything to say, anything to do, that would make this less awkward.Cas wasn't any help, just waiting by the door silently, looking at a point somewhere beyond Dean's left shoulder.

"So," Dean said, rubbing his forearm."How are you?"He winced.Swing and a miss, Winchester.

"Um," Cas said."Tired."

Dean gave a weak laugh."Right."He cleared his throat."How come you don't have any stuff in here?" he asked, looking around the room.Even now, with the sheets rumpled from Cas sleeping in them, Dean couldn't be sure that anyone actually lived here.

Cas tilted his head in confusion, and for some reason the word that popped into Dean's head was _adorable_."What do you mean?"

"I mean," Dean said with a shrug, "my room's got like, albums and weapons and shit.You don't have anything."

Cas followed his gaze around the room, as if only just now noticing that it looked mostly abandoned."I suppose it never occurred to me to decorate," he said quietly.

"Well, you should," Dean told him."Make it your own, you know?"

Cas looked startled at the suggestion."My own?" he said, like it was a foreign concept.

"Yeah, a little personal touch," Dean said.He frowned at Cas, who was staring at him with a blank expression."Hey, are you alright?"

Cas blinked, snapping out of whatever deep thought he'd been trapped in."Yes I'm fine," he said, shaking his head."I'm just tired."He shot Dean an apologetic look."I think it would be best if we both got some sleep."

Right.Sleep.Cas looked like he was going to collapse any second, and Dean was keeping him up."Alright, yeah," Dean said."I'll, uh, I'll let you get back to that."He took a step toward the door, but that was as far as he could force himself.The panic and pain and fear from the dream was all waiting for him just outside the door, and it was almost impossible to throw himself back into it.

"Dean..." Cas said, looking concerned.

Dean cracked a smile at him and opened his mouth to say that he was fine, don't worry about it.

"Can I sleep in here?" was what he said instead.

Fuck.

"You want to sleep... here?" Cas asked.His expression was one of profound, absolute confusion, as if Dean was speaking in tongues that Cas had no hope of deciphering.

Fuck fuck fuck."Yeah, I mean," Dean stammered, tongue tripping over words he wasn't giving it permission to form, "I'm used to sharing motel rooms with Sam so it's kinda weird to be in a room on my own, you know?I'd ask Sam but I'm pretty sure he'd say no, plus you've got a queen sized bed so it's not weird or anything, and I swear I don't snore, whatever Sam tells you-"He had no idea what he was saying or why, but it was getting increasingly difficult to stop himself.

Thankfully, Cas intervened before he could say anything truly mortifying."Dean, it's alright," Cas said, still frowning in concern and confusion."You can stay here tonight."Something else passed over his face, there and gone too quickly for Dean to recognize before it was replaced with a gentle smile.

Instinct tried to force Dean to backpedal, show that he wasn't just a kid scared of his own nightmares, but Cas had already closed the door and made his way over to the lamp on the nightstand.He paused with his hand on the light switch and raised his eyebrows in a silent _Well?_

Dean coughed and hastily lay down on the opposite side of the bed.His heart was pounding again, but this time he didn't think it was out of panic.

Cas switched off the light, leaving them in total darkness.Dean heard him settling down barely a foot away, and wondered why the _fuck_ he had thought this was in any way, shape, or form a good idea.He was so aware of the other body lying next to him, close enough to touch and radiating body heat, that he couldn't even _begin_ to relax, let alone close his eyes and go to sleep.

He cleared his throat."No cuddling or anything, got it?" he mumbled, pushing his face more firmly into the pillow.

Cas sighed but didn't comment."Goodnight, Dean," he murmured simply.

When Dean finally fell asleep, he didn't dream.

 


	6. All My Years

_ Each morning I get up I die a little _   
_Can barely stand on my feet_   
_Take a look in the mirror and cry_   
_Lord what you're doing to me_   
_I have spent all my years in believing you_   
_But I just can't get no relief,_   
_Lord! Somebody, somebody_   
_Can anybody find me somebody to love?_

             -"Somebody to Love," by Queen

 

* * *

 

 

He woke slowly, too comfortable to emerge from the depths of sleep with a lot of enthusiasm.He was curled up with a warm body, tangled so closely with him that he couldn't free himself easily.Not that he wanted to.He couldn't remember the last time he'd woken up wrapped in someone's arms.He made a point of never staying the night after picking up a chick- but at the moment, he couldn't for the life of him remember why.

A light touch, tender and gentle, traced his features and drew him further out of his pleasant doze.He sighed and burrowed closer, earning himself a warm puff of air on his cheek.

"Dean," Cas breathed happily.

Wait.

Dean's eyes snapped open and he jerked away from the other man- the other _man_ \- he'd been cuddling with.Shit, shit, shit, what the fuck was _wrong_ with him?

Cas froze when he saw Dean's eyes were open, the sleepy happiness draining from his face to be replaced by horrified realization.They stared at each other for one long, excruciatingly awkward minute, a bizarre mexican standoff that neither one of them was going to win.

Cas broke first, moving quickly to stand up."Good morning," he said, his tone distant and businesslike.He didn't meet Dean's eyes as he adjusted his pajamas.

"'Morning," Dean answered automatically.He couldn't move, paralyzed with something he couldn't identify.Honestly, he didn't really _want_ to identify it.Some things were better left untouched in the darker corners of his mind.He cleared his throat instead."I'm gonna...I'm gonna go get something to eat," he muttered, forcing himself to get up, brush past Cas, and the leave the room before he could think too hard about what exactly just happened.

Dean was nothing if not a master at denial, so by the time he'd started in on his second bowl of cereal, the entire night was tucked away in an unobtrusive box labeled DO NOT OPEN in the back of his mind, where he'd never have to look at it again.Hopefully.

"'Morning," he said cheerfully when Sam came in and made a beeline for the coffeemaker.

"Hey," Sam mumbled, then shot Dean a suspicious look."Since when are you a morning person?It's not even seven yet."

Dean shrugged."What can I say, I got a good night's beauty sleep."

Cas chose that exact moment to enter the room.Dean coughed and tried to ignore the weird warmth sliding down his spine.

Sam didn't seem to notice, thank god, just glared as the coffeemaker took its sweet time to start up.Cas joined him at the counter, looking at the empty mug in his hands like it held the keys to the universe.Dean stirred his cereal and pretended he didn't mind that he was sitting alone at the table.

"So I was thinking we should look into that case again," Sam said after the coffeemaker had finished hissing and had produced a pot of something semi-drinkable.

"Case?" Dean asked.

"The one that led us inside that factory in the first place," Sam said.He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced."Since it was a trap, maybe whoever set it left a few footprints."

Cas frowned."What about the spell itself?"

Sam paused, considering."We could split up- I go talk to the police again, see what I can dig up, and you try to find out if anyone bought the ingredients nearby, you think?"

Cas opened his mouth, eyes flickering over to Dean- he'd probably meant they should do more research or whatever, safe in the bunker where Dean couldn't get into any trouble.But instead of protesting, he closed his mouth again and nodded.

"I'll go with Cas," Dean said, since neither his brother nor his friend seemed to remember that he was a functioning human being instead of a broken lamp or something.

"Dean-" Sam began with a frown, but he stopped, sighed, and put his hands up in defeat as Dean glared at him."Fine, go with Cas.Just... be careful, alright?"

"Don't worry, I'll try not to trip on my own shoelaces when you're not there to tie them," Dean snapped.He stood and dropped his bowl in the sink so that milk splashed all over the pristine counters.Sam didn't respond as Dean left the room.

***

"We need to see your records," Cas said bluntly the minute they walked into the herbalist's shop.Both Dean and the girl behind the counter stared at him.

"E-excuse me?" the girl said.

Cas flashed a fake badge at her, probably too quickly for her to even see it properly."Your records, please," he said, the low gravelly tones of his voice making the request more menacing than polite.

"Um, I'm not sure-" the girl stammered.

Dean cut her off by leaning on the counter and flashing her his best smile."Relax, your not in trouble," he said, laying on so much charm that he was giving himself a toothache."My partner here is just a little overenthusiastic, is all.We're looking into a missing person case, just retracing their steps, so we'd like to take a look at your sales records, if you don't mind?"

The girl shifted, looking marginally less nervous.Her eyes flickered between Cas and Dean, finally settling on the latter with a hesitant smile."You're kinda young to be in the FBI, aren't you?" she said shyly.

Dean winked at her."Well, believe it or not, I'm the veteran and _he's_ the rookie here," he drawled.

She glanced at Cas' stoic expression and giggled a little."I believe it," she said."Records are in the back, I'll go grab them."

As soon as she was gone Dean turned to Cas in exasperation."Seriously dude, did you have to scare the shit out of her like that?"

Cas huffed out an irritated breath."I wasn't trying to intimidate her," he said."I just didn't see the purpose in meaningless chatter."

"What, were you raised in a barn?" Dean said with a sigh.

To his surprise, Cas laughed a little at that.It was a sad laugh, but whatever, it still counted enough for Dean to feel kinda warm at the sound."Not quite," Cas murmured.

As it turned out, the herbalist shop was a bust- who knew that eye of newt and impure amethyst crystals were such big sellers?Fucking new-age hippies and closeted witches.And as it turned out, Cas didn't have any ideas of where else they might look, so the bunker was pretty much the only option.Huzzah, more research.

"Hey, you wanna grab a burger or something?" Dean asked as they left the store and headed back to the car."I think I saw a diner a couple blocks down the road."

Cas squinted at him."I'm sure there's more nutritious and less... disgusting food back at the bunker," he said drily.

"Exactly," Dean said, earning him a confused head tilt that he did _not_ find adorable thank you very much."C'mon, man, I'm craving something greasy."

Cas didn't say anything, just got int the car with a passive sigh.Dean took that as a win and drove them over to the run-down diner that was indeed so greasy that Dean could practically see the fat pooling on the sidewalks.

As they slid into the cracked plastic booth, Cas cleared his throat."You know, Dean, Sam is just trying to protect you," he said quietly.

Dean froze in the act of picking up a menu.Cas looked at him steadily, hands folded gracefully on the table. Dean looked away and shifted in his seat."Yeah?Well who the hell asked him to," he muttered, making a show of studying the menu.

"Maybe if you talked to him instead of avoiding him, you could both figure out with this bothers you so much."

Dean leveled a glare at him."I know why it bothers me, and trust me, it won't help to talk to him about it."

Cas tilted his head."Why not?"

"Because it's not his job to worry about me!" Dean snapped, his hands curling into fists."I've been looking after him his entire fucking life, and then _he's_ the one who bailed on us to go to school instead of staying with his family.And now he's trying to take care of _me_?What gives him the right, huh?"

Cas looked down at his hands."Dean, Sam went to school thirteen years ago," he reminded him gently.

Dean shifted again and brought his menu up so he wouldn't have to look at Cas."Yeah, well, not for me," he muttered.

They fell silent, Dean staring determinedly at the unoriginal list of diner food, Cas looking out the window at the empty street.This wasn't the fun outing that Dean had thought it might be.

"What can I get for you boys?" the waitress said as she approached the booth, breaking the silence.

"Bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries," Cas said immediately, handing her his untouched menu.

Dean raised his eyebrows."I'll have the same, thanks sweetheart," he said, breaking out his patented Dean Winchester charm as he smiled at her.Never mind the fact that she was at least twenty years older than him, and was wearing a wedding ring besides.Still smiling, he turned back to Cas to find the other man staring practically open-mouthed at him."What?" he asked, smile slipping away.

Cas swallowed and shook his head."Nothing," he said."I suppose I'm still not used to you like this, that's all."

Dean smirked."Yeah?What, did Sam turn me into a health nut or something?Because to tell you the truth, I'd be heartbroken to hear that."Cas chuckled, and the sound stirred something warm and fluttering in Dean's chest yet again.What the hell was up with that, anyway?"I gotta say, man," Dean said, breaking his own train of thought."I'm surprised you didn't get a salad or something.Weren't you all gung ho about the health food crap?"

"The purpose of this outing was to eat greasy food," Cas pointed out."If I was opposed to the idea I would have insisted on going back to the bunker.Besides, I doubt there is anything of real nutritional value anywhere in this diner.Getting a salad would just be an exercise in hypocrisy rather than self care."

Dean snorted."No arguments here," he said."Sam might have something to say about that, though.He always gets salads and shit like that at these kinds of places, says he's got integrity or something."

Cas smiled a little."My point exactly," he murmured.

Dean laughed and wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, why everything seemed so right when he was around Cas, when in reality it was all fucked to hell.He wondered if the reason even mattered.

***

The glow of the clock on the bedside table was unreasonably bright.Dean could see the red haze of it even through his closed eyelids, with his arm over his eyes, with a pillow tossed in front of the bright red numbers, with his heart pounding and his right hand shaking with a phantom weight.He knew, without understanding how, that if he let himself fall asleep, that red glow would insinuate itself into his nightmares and never leave him again.He knew that this dream would be the one to break him.

He sat up abruptly.He even went so far as to put his feet on the ground before pulling them back up again and lying with his face buried into the pillow.He tossed and turned for a few seconds more, stuck in a hellish limbo between nightmares and shame, lit by the red burn of slowly ticking numbers.

The pillow crashed against the alarm clock and knocked it off the bedside table.The room still glowed with red, burning light that skittered over Dean's skin when he wasn't looking, and mocked him from the shadows when he was.There was a face watching him from the corners of his eyes, hidden in the darkness but there all the same, watching and waiting for him to fall asleep, for him to let his guard down even just a little.A shiver crawling down his spine told him that it was his own face peering at him out of the shadows.

Dean groaned, pressing his hands against his eyes so tightly that stars swam in and out of focus among the images from his nightmares.This was ridiculous.He was a grown adult, not some little kid afraid of the dark, running to safety whenever he had a nightmare.He had more pride than that, right?

A breeze danced across his skin out of nowhere, hot breath raising goosebumps along his arms.The floorboard next to his bed creaked; something sharp and deadly traced soft patterns on his cheek.Somewhere nearby, someone was whispering, and if he listened too closely he might end up trapped on a torture rack while a man with his face and black eyes carved masterpieces into his skin.

_Let's go take a howl at that moon._

He got to his feet without meaning to, and was knocking on Cas' door before he had a chance to convince himself not to.Apparently, he didn't have any pride whatsoever.

Cas opened the door, blinked at him sleepily, then let him in without comment.It was only when Dean was lying next to him that he felt like he could breathe again.

 


	7. Oh What Fun it All Would Be

_ And if you say to me tomorrow _   
_oh what fun it all would be,_   
_then what's to stop us pretty baby_   
_but what is and what should never be?_

           -"What Is and What Should Never Be," by Led Zeppelin

 

* * *

 

 

The book thumped loudly on the table when Sam opened it.Dean winced and shifted his weight, drummed his fingers, huffed a breath out through his nose.Sam glanced at him, but didn't comment on Dean's restlessness.They'd had enough arguments over the past week to start one now.

"The thing is," Sam continued, talking to Cas as if Dean wasn't even there.As if this didn't affect Dean vitally."We were looking in the wrong place.The lettering may have been Enochian, but the spell itself..."He flipped through a few pages and put a finger on the title of a chapter.

Cas leaned forward and raised his eyebrows."The Vikings?" he asked in surprise.

"More like an ancient Viking cult," Sam clarified."They used it as part of their marriage rituals, in order to bind two people together.From what I can tell, they took the whole fidelity thing a lot more seriously than their fellow Vikings."

"Bind?" Dean said, mildly alarmed at the thought.Not only had someone stolen ten years from him, he was also _bound_ to the creep.What the hell.

Sam traced the explanatory text with a finger."I know, but it fits.The blood spatter along the floor wasn't from a wound, it was part of the ritual.It looks like the groom would dip a bundle of fir twigs in a blessed bowl of blood from both him and the bride, and he'd splash himself and then his wife with it to finish the spell.The spell would take a few seconds away from the bride, so that she would end one life as a maiden and begin fresh in her new life.The lore says the process... connects their souls, somehow.I'm not really sure what it means though."

"Man-made soulmates," Cas murmured."Interesting."

"Yeah, how about creep-fucking-tastic?" Dean snapped.

Cas looked at him thoughtfully."This might explain the nightmares you've been having.Direct soul-to-soul contact can result in vivid dreams, especially if whoever cast this spell is holding your years ransom."

"Nightmares?" Sam said, looking between Dean and Cas with a frown.

Dean froze.Neither Cas nor Dean had commented on the fact that Dean had slept in Cas' room for the past six nights, or on the nightmares that had him shaking and crying every night, only calmed by the solid warmth of Cas' arms around him.And Dean _definitely_ hadn't mentioned to anybody that sleeping next to Cas was the most calming, comforting experience he'd had in his life; that he was starting to worry that when the spell was broken and the nightmares were gone, Cas wouldn't let him stay anymore despite the craving that had taken up residence under his ribcage.Yeah, he definitely wasn't going to mention _that_ to anybody.

He shrugged, doing his best to seem casual despite the burning in his ears."Yeah, it's no big deal.So, did these Viking guys have a divorce spell, or am I stuck in an arranged marriage to a psycho for the rest of my life?"

Sam hesitated, but let it go with a sigh."It was hard to find, but I dug something up.It'll reverse the spell, but... we'll need your blood, and the blood of the caster to do it."

"Great!" Dean said."So we'll find them, gank them, get their blood, and presto, I'm back to normal."

"It's more complicated than that, Dean," Sam said in exasperation."We don't even know where to start looking, for one thing."

Dean shrugged, suddenly buzzing with anticipation, that persistent itch that crawled under his skin in waves of unpleasant shivers the moment he let his guard down just a little.He suppressed a shudder, reminding himself that they were finally getting somewhere.After days and days of being cooped up and useless, _finally_ there was something he could do."You said we're bound together, right?" he pointed out."So we could use that somehow, get them to come to _us_ , and then ambush them."

"Use you as bait, you mean," Cas said.He narrowed his eyes at Dean, something like anger balling his hands into fists.

"Well, we already know this guy has a thing for me," Dean said."And now that we know I'm basically his soulmate-"

"Absolutely not," Cas said harshly.

"No," Sam said at the same time, and in almost the exact some tone of voice."Dean, this isn't a joke-"

"And I'm not laughing," Dean said through gritted teeth.The buzz of excitement was now a buzz of anger, and he was going to explode soon if he didn't _do_ something.

"Look," Sam said, making a show of being patient for the millionth time this week."This spell is only supposed to take away a few seconds, not _years_.Whoever did this to you is crazy powerful- I don't think they're even human, not with this kind of power- and they stole years of your life force.We have _no idea_ what will happen to you if we mess with them without knowing exactly what we're dealing with."

"So I'm just supposed to sit here while you do research, is that it?" Dean said.

"I don't give a shit what you do, you're just not using yourself as bait," Sam snapped, all his false patience evaporating in an instant.He slammed the book shut and strode off, leaving Dean to boil in his own frustration and restless energy.

***

Dean was halfway up the stairs, halfway to freedom, when Sam's voice froze him in his tracks.

"Dean?"

He stopped and took a deep breath before turning to look at his little brother."Yeah?"

"Going somewhere?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"Cas and I are going out," Dean lied, praying to a god he didn't believe in that Cas wouldn't suddenly emerge to contradict him."To a bar.To drink.Is that acceptable, or do you need to give me a curfew, too?"

Sam shifted, looking a little guilty."You're going with Cas?" he said finally.

"Yes, I'm going with Cas, don't get your panties in a twist," Dean said, rolling his eyes."Cas has the benefit of not having a giant stick up his ass, so he agreed to come with me."

Sam snorted, apparently against his own volition."Right," he said, his expression flattening back into neutral."Cas is the one who doesn't have a stick up his ass.Because he's _such_ a party animal."

Dean narrowed his eyes at his brother."You know what I mean," he mumbled.It was true that Cas wasn't exactly... well, he kind of did have a stick up his ass.But it was a good kind of stick, one that made Dean laugh and wow, okay, this was a weird metaphor to be running with.The point was, Cas was cool, and if Dean wasn't gasping for some alone time with a bottle of Jack, he might have actually asked Cas to come with him.

Sam held up his hands."I'm just kidding," he said.He hesitated, then continued in a quieter voice, "Dean, about this week, I know I'm being a little hard on you, but-"

"But it's for my own good, yeah, I got that part," Dean said drily."Whatever dude, we're cool.Now if you'll excuse me, Cas is waiting in the car."He turned to leave.

"Have fun making doe-eyes at him," Sam murmured to his back.

Dean froze again, icy-cold tendrils snaking around his legs and rooting him to the spot."What?" he managed to say through the numbness blocking his throat.

"What?Oh.It's just that-" Sam smiled a little, making his tone lightly teasing, brotherly ribbing like the kind Dean had been missing these past few years, a purely innocent joke except it _wasn't, it wasn't_ \- "Your giant-ass crush on him is just a little ridiculous, Dean.Remember though, don't put out on the first date, it's not classy."

"Right," Dean said, barely conscious of what he was saying.His stomach lurched with sudden nausea and his head throbbed too loudly and painfully for him to think.He turned back toward the door, trying to conceal the fact that he was really fleeing in terror.

The silence in the empty car and the blur of pavement beneath the tires barely made any difference.

A crush. A _crush_?On _Cas_?He wasn't some kind of-That wasn't fucking possible, that wasn't what this was, Cas was-Why the fuck would Sam even _say_ something like that?

He was just teasing, Dean tried to remind himself.Nothing new, he'd said the same kind of thing to Sam a thousand times, Sam wasn't _actually_ saying that Dean-It wasn't true, was the point.Cas was a cool guy, even though he was kind of weird, and he that way of looking at him like he could actually _see_ Dean, the real Dean, and yeah okay the guy was attractive enough- okay fine he was _really_ attractive and maybe Dean had had some thoughts that had veered into ogling territory, and maybe he'd never felt like this about anybody before, like Cas was special, was-

But it wasn't true, was the point.He didn't have a crush on Cas, because that was just.Not.Fucking.Possible.

He felt like he was going to be sick.

The bar was just as sad and empty as it was the last time, when he'd met Cas and he'd-Nope, not going down _that_ fucking rabbit hole.He sat down, ordered a drink, and knocked it back as quickly as he could, wincing at the burn of cheap whiskey before ordering another one.

It was just like Sam to do this, he thought grumpily.Even though it wasn't fucking true, now he was going to be _thinking_ about it whenever he was around Cas.Thinking about the way that Cas tilted his head when he was confused, the way Cas listened without judgement when he talked, the way he could sometimes feel Cas' fingers carding through his hair after a particularly bad nightmare.Thinking about how he felt lighter and happier when Cas was around than he'd felt in a long, long time.

Fuck.

What would dad say?

Dean savored the burn of his third double in five minutes.Fuck this.Fuck this whole goddamn situation, Sam for keeping him in the dark and keeping him cooped up like a child, Cas for playing along and pretending everything was okay, dad for not being here when Dean could really use his help.Fuck all of it.

"Dean?"

He turned to find himself looking into beautiful blue eyes.Cas.Shit.

He blinked, and the face came into better focus- not Cas.The hunter he'd met the other day.She looked at him in concern, her long blonde hair falling in a curtain to block out the rest of the bar."Hey," he said.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

He flashed her a smile and finished his drink, gesturing for another round."Peachy," he said.

She snorted and sat down next to him."Right.Because downing whiskey in a dirty bar is what most people do when they're happy.I'll have what he's having," she added to the bartender.

"I don't know if you've noticed, sweetheart, but we ain't exactly 'most people,'" Dean said wryly.

"True," she said.She glanced at him, taking her whiskey from the bartender."I'll tell you my sob story if you tell me yours."

He nodded.  "We could do that.Or," he said, looking at her and smiling.He lifted his glass up for a toast."Or we could just drink without doing the whole sharing and caring thing, how does that sound?"

She smiled."That could work," she said, touching her glass to his.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while.Dean was starting to feel the warmth the alcohol had brought him simmering in his veins.It didn't do much to dispel the twisting in his stomach, or the odd sensation shivering along his bones and dancing under his skin like a thousand insects or a million microscopic cuts that were bleeding him from the inside out.

"Was it Castiel?" she said suddenly."Did he do something?"

"What?" Dean said, the word coming out slightly strangled.His pulse pounded erratically in his ears.Goddammit.

She gave him a piercing look."I told you, he's not what he says he is.I don't know what his game is, but if I were you, I wouldn't trust him.He's dangerous."

"Jesus, why is everyone so fucking obsessed with him?" Dean snapped."Can't I have one conversation that doesn't revolve around Cas, for once?Is that too much to fucking ask?"He slammed his empty glass on the counter and the bartender brought him another without even being asked."Just-Fuck him.Fuck everything."

She put her hands up, smiling a little."Sorry, sorry," she said. "Didn't mean to hit a nerve there."She picked up her drink."Fuck 'em all, yeah?"

He glanced at her, then sighed."Fuck 'em all," he said, touching their glasses together again.

As she tipped her head back to drink, the light caught her face for one short, brilliant moment, bringing out lighter streaks of gold in her hair, the sensual shape of her lips around the glass, the color of her eyes.

She really did have gorgeous deep blue eyes.

***

It was a good thing her motel was just around the corner, because Dean was in no condition to drive, and his hands and lips were a little occupied besides.She pressed him against the motel door as she unlocked it, her thigh pushing between his legs and her teeth scraping against the tendons in his neck.The door fell open behind him and he fell into the room with it, half from her hands shoving him inside, half from the space suddenly at his back.She kicked the door closed behind her and grinned at him.There was something predatory in her smile.

"Take off your shirt," she said.

He smirked at her.Two could play at this game.He took his overshirt off slowly, going so far as to fold it before placing it delicately on a chair.He raised his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes and began shedding her jacket."Asshole," she said, turning to the motel fridge and leaving Dean free to look around.

He blinked as he suddenly took in the sight of sigils upon sigils scrawled on every inch of the walls."Holy shit," he said, swallowing.

She followed his gaze as she passed him a beer."Protection sigils," she explained lightly."Never know what's out to get you, you know?"

Dean laughed weakly.Something tugged at his alcohol-soaked mind, a memory too distant and dim for him to understand it.A half-heard whisper, his mother murmuring something about angels as he fell asleep in her arms."I usually just stick to rings of condiments," he joked, trying to shake the uneasy feeling in his gut, the never-ending buzzing in his bones.

She shrugged and drifted closer, fitting her body right up against his.He swallowed when her hip brushed against his crotch, his dick taking control back from the muddled thoughts trying to gain purchase."You know the story," she murmured, slipping her hand up to his neck and combing her fingers lightly through the hair on the back of his head."Piss off the right people- the right monsters- monster kills your father and your mom commits suicide, go off to get revenge..."She shifted in a long, sensual line, smiling at Dean's sharp intake of breath."Do you really want to hear my life story, or do you want to fuck me?" she whispered.

She didn't give him a chance to answer, instead crushing her lips against his with a violence he could barely keep up with.His brain had already short-circuited under the influence of all the alcohol swimming in his bloodstream and the sudden pressure of her hand over his cock.

He let her pull his undershirt over his head, the beers forgotten on the dresser.Her skin was so soft and the sting of her teeth almost shocking in contrast, tracing the razors edge of difference between pleasure and pain.He bit her lip lightly to match the onslaught of sensation overwhelming him; he got shoved onto his back on the mattress for his troubles.

The soft curves of her body sliding over his felt odd after a week of waking up curled against a muscular male body.He groaned at the throb of want that shuddered through him at the thought.

"You like that?" she whispered, rolling her body against his once more.

No, what he liked was the way Cas' body heat burned into his core, the piercing blue of his eyes, the tenderness of his touch.But she was pulling off her underwear- where had the rest of their clothes gone?- and sinking down onto his dick, and he couldn't remember how to speak, how to think.Couldn't remember why he shouldn't imagine that it was Cas riding his cock, Cas moaning and scraping stubble across his cheek as their mouths met in another burning kiss, Cas looking down at him with that tender expression he'd woken up to every day for the last week.

When he came, it was to the image of two bright blue eyes, and they didn't belong to the girl fucking him.

 


	8. Any Way the Wind Blows

_I'm just a poor boy,_   
_I need no sympathy,_   
_Because I'm easy come, easy go,_   
_Little high, little low,_   
_Anyway the wind blows_   
_doesn't really matter to me._

           -"Bohemian Rhapsody," Queen

 

* * *

 

 

The cold night air was a sharp relief after the stifling, enclosed motel room.  Dean leaned against the wall, taking breath after deep breath of sweet, clean air, trying to rid himself of the claustrophobia pounding through his veins, turning his stomach with uneasiness.

He shouldn't have slept with her.  The sex clung to him like a cloying perfume, choking him with restlessness, with self-disgusted dissatisfaction.  The buzzing under his skin was worse than ever.  He could feel it pulling the nightmares in, almost close enough for him to see with his waking eyes.

He breathed in the crisp air and let it dry the sweat and perfume from his skin.

The stars were distant and hesitant, barely shining bright enough to see.  Even out here, where there were no lights to block them out.  Maybe there was a haze blanketing the earth and blurring their light.  Maybe he'd only ever wished that he could see them the way other people could.

He sighed and watched the vapors of his breath blow into a cloud to obscure the stars further.  Despite the regret and restlessness clawing at him from the inside out, he suddenly felt oddly calm and distant, serene for the first time since waking up in that factory.  It was as if he was floating in the darkness, out there with the weak glow of the stars.  He was no longer tethered to the ground, not by gravity, not by life or his memories.  It wasn't his life, anyway.  His life was on the road, hunting with his dad and taking care of his little brother.  Where he was now, it was somewhere different, somewhere dad was gone- dead or disappeared or retired- and Sam didn't need him anymore.  This was someone else's life, another Dean; and all that other Dean seemed to have was a best friend who looked at him with big blue eyes.

It didn't matter, none of it, because it wasn't his life.  He could be anything, _do_ anything, float away into the night sky with nothing to hold him back.  It didn't matter.

He took one last deep breath, then pushed himself off the wall and made his way back to the car.

***

_"Someone who's worthy."_

_He laughs and blood pours from his hands his feet his eyes his mouth.  It pools on his arm and glows red.  "That's it baby, just like that.  I'm gonna make it so good for you."  The blood pours into him and burns like fire, like grace._

_Don't make me go back I can't go back don't do this_

_Sam lies dead in his arms._

_"Sammy?"  His hands are the ones wrapped around Sam's throat._

_"Don't worry, I'm going to fix it," dad says.  "Kill your brother and it'll all be over."  There's a red mark glowing on his arm._

_Blood burns in his veins and all he can do is scream.  A white light fills a girl standing in an empty field, and everything around her is blood and pain and death.  He clutches his dead brother and drowns in rivers of blood pouring into his open wounds._

_There's no white light here to save him._

"Dean," someone murmured, shaking his arm.  He opened his eyes with a gasp; for a moment all he could see was a menacing figure with his own face looming over him, pure black eyes staring out of it.

"Dean, it was just a dream," the figure said gently, and the illusion shattered.  Cas looked at him with a worried expression, his eyes only black because of the darkness of the room.

Dean took a deep, shaking breath.  He nodded at Cas shortly, pretending there weren't tears still staining his cheeks.  "Yeah," he mumbled.  "A dream.  Sorry."

He fell back asleep with Cas' arms wrapped securely around him.

He woke up again more slowly when light from the hall outside filtered through the crack around the door; he was too comfortable to bother waking up completely.  The bed itself was a little harder than he would have liked- unlike the foam mattress back in his own room- but the warm body tangled up with his more than made up for it.  It was strange how quickly he'd gotten used to this, to sharing a bed, waking up pressed tightly against someone else's body.

Well, his dick was certainly happy about the situation.

He shifted a little, half wanting to just drift back to sleep, but the resulting friction against his erection sent sparks flying through his body, waking him up a little more.  It felt so good that he couldn't help but do it again, just a tiny shift of his hips rubbing his cock against a warm thigh.

He felt the hard press of someone else's hardness against his hip, and the sensation made his dick throb before he could properly process what it even was.  When he did, the realization only made it so far through the dazed, sleepy fog of his mind; he couldn't bring himself to freak out about it when it felt _so fucking good_.

His breath mingled with Cas' as he moved his hips again, more insistently this time.  Cas' quiet gasp brushed past his ear, forcing Dean to finally open his eyes.

Cas stared back at him, mouth half open as he panted, those goddamn blue eyes only inches away from Dean's.  Maybe this was a bad idea, and maybe Dean would find reasons to regret this later.  But right now, sleep was still clinging to the corners of his mind, dulling the panic that might have quashed any desire.  Right now, he was half out of his mind from the fire dancing on his nerves, the pounding of his heart rushing blood through his body and his cock and back to his heart, and Cas was _so warm_ next to him.  He couldn't help himself.

None of it mattered, anyway.

He caught Cas' lips with his own, and _god_ , Cas tasted even better than Dean could have imagined.

He pulled away slowly.  Cas was still staring at him, his eyes wide and wanting in a way that sent shivers down Dean's spine.  "Dean," Cas whispered, something conflicted and confused passing over his face- but that's not the way this moment was going to go, not when Dean could feel Cas' body shifting unconsciously against his and it was slowly driving him crazy.  "Dean, I-"

Dean brushed his fingers lightly over Cas' cheek and around to the back of his neck.  Cas' breath stuttered, interrupting whatever it was he was going to say.  Heart pounding in his ears, Dean leaned forward and kissed him again.  Harder this time, and this time Cas moved his lips in tandem with Dean's, wrapping his arm more securely around Dean's waist so that they were lying flush against each other.

Dean's breath hitched without his permission.  He bit Cas' lower lip in retaliation, then bit it again out of sheer delight at the feeling of those pink, _gorgeous_ lips in between his teeth.  The sharp gasp that Cas gave made Dean's heart pound even harder with something he couldn't name, something he didn't want to name.  What he could do was push his body against the other man's, lining up their cocks through the thin fabric of their pajamas.  Cas slid his tongue inside Dean's mouth and he moaned, wanting more, _needing_ more.

They found a rhythm almost accidentally, moving out of instinct and driving need rather than intent.  Dean couldn't think about anything except how perfect this felt, Cas' body moving against his, Cas' hands slipping under his shirt and digging blunt nails into his skin, Cas' mouth bitting and licking and sucking Dean's and driving him fucking crazy.

"Dean," Cas gasped, his voice urgent and breathless.  Dean almost came there and then at the sound.  He'd never been this on edge in his life, just from a little kissing, a little rubbing, nothing really except _holy shit right fucking there._  Cas' touch seared through him like a drug and he was already addicted to it.  He was drunk on the feeling of wanting Cas, of Cas wanting him, of them rutting against each other like horny teenagers.  He didn't have the presence of mind to even care.

"Cas," he breathed.  "Oh- oh god, Cas-"

He'd never felt this way about anyone.

The thought was enough to snap him a little bit back into himself.  Just enough to wonder what he was doing, not nearly enough to make him stop.  It felt too good, too perfect, too _right_ to stop, and that was suddenly unbelievably terrifying.

Cas gasped in his each, rubbing his cock against Dean's with a strong push of his hips.  There were so many sparks flying under Dean's skin at the contact that he was surprised the room hadn't caught on fire.  The fear disappeared again, lost under the desperation that was building into a frenzy in his veins.  Both of them were moving feverishly now, delirious with the friction building so deliciously between them.  Dean couldn't even think now why it was he'd been fighting this when he'd had it within his reach for so long.

"Dean," Cas groaned, and _god_ his voice was like lightning and fire and passion and sin all wrapped up in one, and Dean didn't know what he was thinking anymore but it didn't matter because it felt _right_ and _good_ and _perfect_.  Like everything Dean had ever wanted.  "Oh- _fuck_ , Dean-"

"That's it, baby," Dean murmured, not even sure what he was saying.  The words seemed wrong, out of place, but he couldn't help himself, so lost in the heat of Cas' touch.  "C'mon baby, just like that.  I'm gonna make it so good for you-"

Cas froze.

Dean whimpered at the loss of movement and tried to kiss him again.  Cas shoved him with bruising strength instead.  "Dean, stop," Cas snapped.

Dean blinked at him through the haze of lust clouding his mind, still gasping with need and want and _please Cas keep going_.  "What's wrong?" he asked.

Cas laughed, the sound so sharp and bitter that it broke through Dean's arousal.  "You," Cas said.  " _You_ are wrong.  Dammit, I'm such an idiot."

Something cold and hard sank down through Dean's throat, his heart, his lungs, lodging itself as a dead weight in his stomach.  "...What?" he croaked.

Cas sat up, fixing Dean with a piercing look.  Dean felt exposed, vulnerable under the focus of those icy-blue eyes that had been so warm just a moment before.  "What do you think this relationship is, Dean?" Cas asked quietly.  "A harmless little game you can play?  Where you can sleep next to me and have it mean nothing?  Where you can kiss me and have sex with me and have it mean nothing?"

Dean swallowed, his heart pounding painfully.  No.  The answer was no, no he didn't think that, no he knew what this was and it wasn't- but the answer was stuck in his throat.  It meant something- god, it meant _everything_ \- but he couldn't...  He wasn't...

"What, you mean you don't want a piece of this?" he scoffed to cover his panic.

Wrong answer.

Cas' expression hardened instantly, filling with anger and a hurt so profound that Dean felt it down in his bones.  "No, I don't," Cas said coldly.  "I thought maybe I could, that maybe a younger version of you might actually-  But clearly I was wrong.  I don't want _you_ , Dean.  I want the man you're supposed to be.  And the cruel joke is that I can't have either."

Dean stared at him.  "Cas-" he whispered.

Cas flinched and looked away.  "You aren't him," he murmured, almost to himself.  He turned his steely gaze back to Dean.  "Get out."

Dean swallowed again, feeling his hands starting to shake.  He couldn't tell if it was from the pain bleeding out from his chest, or from the buzzing that had been haunting him since he woke up in that goddamn factory.  Maybe they were one and the same.  "Fine," he spat, struggling to breathe, to move, to think.  Not to feel.  Feeling was the dangerous one.  "Fine," he said again.  He pushed himself out of Cas' bed, hiding the tremble in his knees as he strode across the floor and jerked the door open violently.  When he slammed it shut, it didn't feel nearly as satisfying as Dean wanted it to be.  It was hollow, empty, just like the gesture.  Just like Dean.

He barely made it back to his room before he collapsed on the floor, shaking so hard he was sure he would fly apart at any moment.  Funny, because his world had already shattered; what difference did it make if he did too.

***

Dean stayed in his room for a long time, curled in on himself with his forehead pressing into his knees.  The earth was vibrating, dying all around him in flashes of nightmares, rivers of blood and rings of fire, Sam and Cas looking down at him with grim, bloodied faces and a line of syringes.  He suppressed a sob and pushed his knees onto his closed eyes until he saw stars- but even then he could still feel them watching him, judging him, Cas' eyes fixed on him as rivers of his blood pooled around Dean and drowned him.  He was babbling something, begging for forgiveness, snarling curses, and still the burning rivers went on and on and on and there was nothing he could do to stop them, to slow them, to escape from the torment of this hell on earth.

Time ticked onwards, ever onwards, and slowly the shaking and waking nightmares eased into the background.  He gasped and coughed and tried to breathe normally, struggling to fight his way back to himself.

His stomach growled.  He didn't know how long he'd been lying here, shaking and crying like a child, but it was long enough that his body was beginning to protest.  He uncurled slowly, wincing at his stiff muscles and that goddamn ever-present thrumming in his veins.  He stood even more slowly, using the wall to prop himself up; but he paused at the door.  His stomach rumbled again.  All he had to do was open the door, walk down the hall, grab a box of cereal, and come back.  No need to talk to Sam, or to...  Open the door, walk down the hall, grab the cereal, and come back.  Quick and easy.

He opened his door and walked to the kitchen with as much confidence as he could muster.  He didn't even flinch when he passed Cas' closed door along the way.

He did flinch a little when he saw Sam sitting at the kitchen table with a sandwich and an angry scowl.  He swallowed and continued inside, even when Sam noticed him and put the sandwich down.

"Hey," Sam said, in an overly casual tone of voice.  "You're up late."

Dean shrugged and opened the pantry door.  He heard Sam stand and tried not to wince visibly at the sound.

"So I talked to Cas," Sam began conversationally.

The cereal box under Dean's fingertips slipped off the shelf and spilled onto the floor as his hand spasmed and shook.  He swallowed, frozen in place aside from the trembling in his hands.  Cas wouldn't have _said_ anything, right?  He wouldn't just... He wouldn't tell _Sam_ what they had... what he had...  "Yeah?" Dean croaked, aiming for nonchalant and missing by several hundred feet.

"He told me he spent last night in his room," Sam said.  "Not at a bar with you."

The bar.  Right.  Relief flooded through his veins, allowing him to move again.  Sam was angry about Dean lying and going to the bar alone, not...  Right.

Dean took a deep breath and turned to face his brother.  "Yeah, so?"

Sam sighed and crossed his arms.  "Dean, we talked about this-"

"No, _you_ talked about this," Dean snapped, cutting off the potential lecture.  Goddammit, all he'd wanted was to get some food and then hide out in his room in _peace_.  Why did Sam have to decide that _now_ was a good time to tell him off?  " _You_ decided that it was too dangerous for me to so much as sneeze in the direction of the door, not me."

"Because it _is_ dangerous-"

"Well you know what would make it less dangerous?  Telling me whatever the fuck it is that you're hiding!" Dean shouted, the panicked and broken and painful thrum vibrating through his body exploding into anger.  Anger at Sam, at Cas, at himself, everything.  There wasn't one single part of this whole thing that was fair or good, and he was done playing along with a life that wasn't even his to begin with.  "Stop trying to pretend that you have my best interests at heart, Sam, and _tell me_ what's going on!"

Sam glared at him, the muscle in his jaw ticking.  "Why, so you can go out there as bait like you wanted?"

"Hey, I don't see anyone else coming up with any bright ideas."

"Dammit Dean, I'm not going to let you out just so you can get killed by something we _know_ is way more powerful than any of us," Sam said.

"It's not your job to take care of me," Dean told him flatly.

Sam stood up straight, his eyes flashing dangerously.  "Oh, that's rich," he snapped.  "So I'm not allowed to take care of you, but you're allowed to run my entire life for me?"

Dean clenched his fists, all the ugly pain and anger he'd felt watching Sam walking away from him for the apple fucking pie life spinning in his head.  He'd stood there helplessly while Sam left their family on the roadside, Sam's angry words about dad, about him, about their family still echoing in his ears.  "It's _my_ job to protect _you_ ," he spat.

Sam laughed, the bitter edge destroying any humor that might have appeared there.  "Why, because dad said so?" he asked.  "I don't know if you noticed this, Dean, but dad's gone."

"And what exactly happened to him, huh?" Dean shouted.  "What exactly has happened in the past ten years that has turned you into a _goddamn asshole_?  Tell me what's going on!"

Sam took a step forward, all of that menacing height looming over Dean.  If looks could kill, Dean would have spontaneously combusted about five minutes ago, only to be struck by lightning several thousand times now with the strength of Sam's anger.  "You want to know what's happened in the past ten years," Sam snarled.  "You want to know how you were so determined to _take care_ of me that you sold your goddamn soul and went to _Hell_?  You want to know how you got me possessed against my will because you were too scared to move on?  You want to know how you became a fucking _demon_ and killed a shitton of people before we caught you, all because you couldn't get over dad's fucking orders?"  Dean was backed into the corner now, but he refused to give way even as Sam's words spun the room like a top.  "You know what Dean," Sam continued.  "Fuck you.  Fuck you for complaining that I'm trapping you or whatever, because I've spent most of my life being trapped by _you_ and dad in the name of 'protecting me' and I'm _done_ with it."

There was a pause.  Sam's words echoed around the room, searching for a place to rest because Dean was too shocked to process them anymore.

Sam swallowed and turned away.  "You know, I think I finally figured it out," he said quietly.  "Why you did all of that, why our family is so broken.  There were a lot of times when I thought it was because of me, because I had done something wrong.  And there were some times that I thought... maybe it was just you, that you were right about yourself.  But it's not.  It's not because of me, and it's not because you're poison or whatever it is you like say to keep yourself feeling like shit.  It's because of _this_."  He gestured toward Dean, taking in everything ten years too young.  "It's because of this part of you, this version of you that's permanently stuck in the idea that you have to protect me.  That it's your job to take care of me, instead of taking care of yourself.  The version still following dad's orders even though he's been dead for nine years.   _You_ are what's wrong here, not the real Dean."

Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  The words flew through him like stones, like bullets, carving out pieces to take with them.  Soon there would be nothing left of him but holes whistling woefully in the wind.  Now he knew that no one would even care once he was gone.

He swallowed and opened his eyes to look stonily at Sam.  "Alright then," he said.  His voice sounded dull in his ears, as lifeless as he felt.  "If you and Cas want the 'real me' back so bad, fine.  But the only way you're gonna manage that is if you lure in the sonofabitch who cursed me, and I'm pretty much the only bait you got."

Sam clenched his jaw and glared at him.  Dean looked back at him steadily, without yielding.  His plan was the only plan they had, and Sam knew it.  Besides, this way, everyone would get something that they wanted.  Sam and Cas would finally get rid of this ten-years-too-young pest they've been dealing with.  And Dean, well.

Dean just wanted it to be over.


	9. Let Her Under Your Skin

_Hey Jude, don't be afraid_   
_You were made to go out and get her_   
_The minute you let her under your skin_   
_Then you begin to make it better_

           -"Hey Jude," The Beatles

 

* * *

 

 

The factory lay in a shadow where both light and sound were utterly absent, so thoroughly abandoned by its tenants that even the streetlights outside and the whistling wind didn't deign to cross the threshold.  Dean's footfalls made no sound either as he crept through the darkness- he was too good a hunter to disturb the silence that blanketed this place like a thick layer of dust.

Even in the darkness, though, he could see the lines of fog that were tugging at him.  He shook his head to clear it.  The smell of lavender swelled around him as he moved, and the fog thickened, pulled him forward with more force.  His hands shook ever so slightly around his gun.

In the absolute silence of the factory, he heard the soft scuff of a shoe in the next room.  Right where the twisting, swirling fog was trying to lead him.

He took a deep breath.  The thrumming, buzzing, shivering _itch_ had gone beyond unbearable, and was getting worse with every waft of that lavender scent.  The room spun around him- but he'd come too far to turn back now.  He raised the gun and rounded the corner sharply.

The girl spun around in surprise from where she was bent over the remnants of the spell.  Her long blonde hair swirled around her in an arc that flowed with the lines of fog spinning around her.

"Well," she said, regaining her composure just a little bit.  "If it isn't Mr. Hit and Run himself.  I gotta say, I wasn't expecting to see you again any time soon."

Dean frowned, letting the gun drop slightly.  "What are you doing here?" he asked.  A breeze floated past him and he shivered.  It did nothing to dispel the scent of lavender surrounding him, nor the fog that was drifting in increasingly frenzied paths between him and the other hunter.

She raised her eyebrows.  She seemed to be swaying in the same frantic rhythm that had possessed the fog; her face was pale and her eyes wide, despite all her studied nonchalance.  "Same thing as you, I'm guessing," she said.

"And what's that?"  Dean tightened his grip on the gun.  His heart was pounding painfully in his chest, far, far too quickly.

She gave him an odd look.  "Hunting, obviously," she said carefully, as if he was slow or something.  "We're working the same case, remember?"

"Right," Dean said.  "The same case."

"Do you mind pointing that thing somewhere else?" she said, her voice taking on a sharper edge as she eyed his gun.

Dean hesitated for half a second, caught in a moment between two breaths where he was floating in a cloud and there were drumbeats all around him, pounding out his heartbeat and shaking him until he was ready to fly apart-  He snapped himself out of it and brought the gun up again.  "Yeah, no can do sweetheart," he said grimly.  "You have something of mine, and I'd like to get it back."

"What are you-"

The click of a lighter interrupts her, and the flames catch on the oil to spread around her in a perfect circle.

"Fire, Sam, really?" Dean said, frowning at the growing flame.

Sam stepped forward from where he'd been hidden, Cas just a few feet behind him.  "Trust me, Dean, this'll hold her."

The girl spun around to glance at them, then turned her attention back to Dean.  "What the fuck is going on?  Are you crazy, let me go!"

"Cut the crap," Sam said.  "We know what you are, and we know what you've done to Dean.  We're not letting you out of there until you help us reverse it."

She paused, her eyes flicking between the three of them.  She laughed suddenly, making Dean jump in surprise.  With the searing heat separating them, he could feel the effects of the attraction spell wearing off, burned away by the fire.  "Well, I guess there's no point denying," she said.  Dean glanced at Sam, and saw him looking equally as puzzled.  None of them had expected her to freaking _confess_.  "What did you use to-"  She narrowed her eyes and sniffed the air.  "Ah," she continued with a rueful smile.  "Lavender oil and amethyst powder to invoke the bond and get me here, clever."  She turned her smile over to Sam.  "It's good to see you again, Sam," she added.  "It's been a long time."

Sam frowned.  "Do I know you?"

"Not as well as Castiel does- isn't that right, angel?  Then again, you only possessed me for a few minutes, so maybe I'm easily forgotten."

Cas stepped forward, eyes wide with recognition.  "Claire Novak," he breathed.

"Jimmy's daughter?" Sam asked incredulously.

Claire beamed.  "So you do remember me," she said, looking almost ecstatic at this development.

Cas met her eyes sadly.  "I remember," he said.  His voice was almost quieter than the crackling of the flames.

"So wait, she's human?" Sam said, looking at the apparently unnecessary ring of fire surrounding her.  "How is that even possible, I thought the forces behind the spell-"

"Were too powerful for a human to handle?" Claire finished for him.  "Surprising, isn't it?  But then again, what's that saying- we create our own demons?  Well, maybe not a demon in this case, but close enough."

She looked directly at Dean at that, her gaze piercing, nearly painful in its intensity.  He shifted uneasily and looked over at Sam instead of meeting her eyes.  "What the hell is going on?" he asked.  "You guys know who she is?"

Sam and Cas shared one of those looks, the ones that left Dean out in the cold, begging for whatever scraps of information they deigned to give him.  He swallowed and looked down; out of the corner of his eye he could see Claire smiling.  She was pretty damn serene for someone surrounded by a ring of fire and three guns pointed squarely at her heart.

"What's wrong, Dean?" she said.  "Have your brother and your dear friend Castiel been _hiding_ things from you?  That's not really fair, is it?"

There was no warning: one minute, Dean was standing in front of the captured girl, and the next he was on his knees, flooded with white-hot images searing into his mind's eye.  Images of Claire, of her life, drowning him in her pain and grief and anger until her can't even remember who he was anymore-

_She opens the front door and sees her father_ \- Cas, what the- _but he's not her father.  It's hard to believe that Heaven will take care of you when the angels have stolen your family._

_She's a year older when the angels give her father back, but he isn't back, not really, and there are still tears streaking down her mother's face even though they're sitting at the table like everything is normal again._

_It's the demons who take her mother._

_It's Castiel who takes her._

_Roaring, rushing, flames burning at the core of her and all around her, trapping her, burning her-_

_Castiel_ \- what was Cas doing, how was he- _leaves her and takes her father.  This time for good._

_She holds her mother's hand and wonders why anyone would ever pray.  She wakes up screaming because the grace inside her is still burning.  She checks her mother's drawers and cabinets for bottles of pills and packs of razors._

_She misses one, a single razor hidden in the crack behind the sink.  She finds her mother on the floor of the bathroom in a pool of her own blood.  Her unseeing eyes stare accusingly at the Heaven that broke their family._

_She is sixteen years old, and the angels have stolen both of her parents.  She doesn't know how to keep going without them._

_She sees her father's face again when she's seventeen years old.  His face is on the news, and people are worshipping his image.  They call him the new God, and he slaughters them by the thousands._

_He says his name is Castiel_ \- oh God, Cas- _and she knows what to do.  She picks up a gun and leaves her home behind.  She has work to do._

"Dean!"

He gasped for air, the room spinning around him until he had to roll to the side and retch out the contents of his stomach.  Sam's hands hovered over his back, not quite touching him but not pulling back either.  "I'm fine," he managed, spitting out the sour taste in his mouth.  Sam stepped back, allowing him to clamber to his feet again.  He looked over at Cas, seeing in double image both Cas his friend, and the stolen face of Jimmy Novak.

"Last night I told you that a monster destroyed my life," Claire said quietly.  "Well, you're looking right at it."

Cas swallowed and looked away from him, guilt written across his face like a confession.  With what looked like a great effort, he dragged his eyes back to Claire, frowning a little at what she'd said.  "What do you mean, last night?" he asked.  "What did you do to him?"

The grief in her face retreated behind a brief moment of vindictive pleasure.  "Dean didn't tell you?" she asked, positively delighted.  "Don't worry, Castiel, I didn't do anything to him that he didn't _heartily_ consent to.  At least, I think that's what he meant when he begged me to go harder while I fucked him."

"Cas-" Dean croaked, but Cas wouldn't look at him.  Instead he looked at the ground, his expression devastated before he schooled it.

Dean felt sick, and this time it wasn't because of the spell.

"Oh no, did I hurt your feelings Castiel?" Claire said.  "This is awesome- you know, I was originally planning to curse Dean out of existence right away, until Sasquatch here interrupted me.  We share a birthday, did you know?  So on the day I turn eighteen, Dean here turns... to nothing, I guess."  She shrugged.  "But this is actually much better.  Slow and painful, just like what happened to me."

Cas swallowed.  "Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice rough and broken.  "Why Dean?  He's never done anything to you.  I'm the one you want."

She cocked her head, and for a moment she looked exactly like her father, a man whose dead meatsuit was being worn by an ex-angel.  "It's not obvious?" she said.  "I'm just doing to you what you did to me.  You destroyed my family, so I'm going to destroy yours."

"You're not destroying anything," Sam said.  Dean could see his knuckles turning white around the handle of his gun.  "In case you haven't noticed, you're kind of surrounded."

She glanced at the ring of fire, then at the three guns pointed squarely at her head.  "Yeah, about that," she said, and lifted her hand.

The guns flew from their hands, skidding across the room and out of sight in the shadows.  A breeze swirled around them and then burst into a violent gust of wind.  It passed over the flames and extinguished it immediately.  Another twist of her fingers, and all three of them slammed into the wall.

"I thought you said that she's human," Dean hissed at Sam.

"I am human," Claire said as she approached him.  She glanced at Cas where he was pinned nearby, close enough that if they were free they could reach each other- it might as well be a hundred miles with their arms stuck firmly to their sides.  "The angel inside me, not so much."

"Angel?" Dean said.  "What are you-"

_The field where Claire stopped for the night is wide open and dark under the moonless sky, calm, peaceful.  But the static of the radio and the whine piercing the air tell a different story._

_"You're wounded," she says, and the angel hums its agreement.  The Fall wounded many angels, and her blade in their chests hadn't helped them any.  "Don't worry, you'll be safe here," she tells the angel softly.  She opens her arms and whispers, "Yes."_

_The angel pours into her, swallows her in a pool of brilliant light, moves to take control of its new vessel- but Claire is the one who is swallowing the angel, trapping the angel, taking control of the angel with a smile on her face and a plan one step closer to completion._

Dean gasped for air, struggling against the bond between them, the grip holding him against the wall.  It was the image, the one he'd been seeing all week of the girl standing in a field and swallowing the light.

"You'd be amazed what the combination of angelic grace and human spellcraft can do," Claire told him.  "Once I got control of Raiel- which was so easy I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, by the way- I figured out pretty quickly that there's a lot you can do if you just take the time to figure out how."  She stepped up to Dean and cupped his face with gentle hands.  He could hear Sam and Cas struggling against their supernatural bonds, but all he could see were Claire's wide blue eyes.  "So much that I can do," she whispered.

"Claire, please," Cas said desperately.  "Don't do this.  I'm sorry about what I did to your father, to your family- but they're gone.  Hurting me isn't going to bring them back.  Hurting Dean won't bring them back."

She smiled, still looking deep into Dean's eyes.  "No, but at least they'll be at peace," she whispered, and touched her finger to Dean's forehead.

He screamed as pain shot through him, overwhelmed him, broke him.

_He stands on the blacktop and watches his brother and father screaming at each other.  He stands on the blacktop as Sam shouts that there was nothing in this family for him, that he doesn't need this family, that he can do this on his own.  He stands helplessly as Sam walks away, abandoning him like everyone always abandons him._

"Dean!"

_He sees Sam hunched over a stack of papers and wonders what they could possibly be.  He catches sight of an official logo on one corner, a steeple with big letters stamped over it, and something like dread fills his heart._

_He sits sullenly in the principal's office while she looks at him sternly.  He answers her questions in sullen monosyllables and wishes she would let him just leave already.  None of them actually care that he got in a fight, that he's failing his classes, that he got caught stealing a notebook from his classmate.  Dad's coming back from a hunt tomorrow anyway, and once they're gone nobody will even remember him._

"Dean, fight it!"

_He hears the Impala's horn and knows that this fragile new life of his won't last through the night.  There's a girl waiting for him to sweep her away to a dance, there's a wrestling match in a week, there's a father-figure ready to fight for him.  He swallows and says goodbye to Sonny.  He pretends that his heart isn't breaking._

_He stands at attention while his dad walks away, knowing he won't be back for days.  He counts the money in his fist and knows that it won't be enough to feed the both of them if dad doesn't come back in time._

_He lowers a shotgun as John cradles Sam and looks at him with something like hatred._

"Dean!"  That was someone else shouting his name.  A familiar voice.  A stranger's voice.  A familiar voice.

_He listens to his brother crying and wonders when mom will come back to calm Sammy down.  He gets up and crawls into Sam's crib, cradling him until they both fall asleep._

_He clutches his brother in his arms and mumbles that it will be okay.  The smell of smoke fills the air._

"Dean!"  The voice again.

Cas.

_He hides while his parents yell at each other, and the front door slams behind his dad.  Mom is crying, and he can't do anything to-_

Cas.

His body was in flames, existing in a place beyond pain, beyond existence; but he could still hear Cas' voice, Sam's voice, calling him back.

_He curls up in his bed and hides his face from the monster under the bed-_

_He stands in-_

_He runs-_

Dean forced himself to open his eyes through the searing pain.  He couldn't see, couldn't focus- but his eyes were open, his body responding just barely to his commands.  The pain washed through him again, tearing at his skin and bones and soul, but he clung to the thread of Sam's voice, Cas' voice.

"Dean-"

Cas.  That was Cas.  Cas, who he hadn't known just a week ago, but who he couldn't imagine living without.  Cas, who had a quiet, dry sense of humor that kept Dean guessing constantly whether he was serious.  Cas, who seemed to know everything about everything and yet constantly missed sarcasm, or jokes, or pop culture references, who seemed eternally confused.  Cas, who was the kindest person Dean had ever met.  Cas, who looked at Dean like he was actually worth something.  Like he was precious.  Like he was somehow worth all of this hell.

Cas who was screaming his name, because Claire was killing Dean to hit Cas where it would hurt the most.

With a monumental effort, Dean wrenched himself free of her control.

Claire gasped, her face turning pale.  Dean pushed himself to his hands and knees where he'd fallen, still shaking under the waves of pain still pulsing through him.  He could feel the spell still strengthening the bond between them, still holding him captive, but for the moment he had control.

Claire snarled and balled her fists.  The spell tugged at him again, dragging him back under.  The memories came hard and fast now, too quick to truly give any impression other than pain, fea, anger, pain, pain _pain_ -

Everything stopped.

He lifted his head and saw the scene almost in slow motion.  Cas and Sam taking advantage of Claire's distraction.  Breaking free of her angelic control.  Claire turning towards them, eyes wide with shock, with anger.  Cas getting there first, a familiar silver blade in his hand, ready to strike.

She didn't even try to fight as he slid the blade through her ribs.

The light grew around the blade, glowing from deep within her core.  She looked down at it in shock, and then something like relief.  Her gaze trailed up to fix on Cas' face, and in that moment, she looked no older than a child, seeing her father for the last time.  "Daddy?" she whispered.

The light flared, burning her from the inside out.  She collapsed on the ground, her eyes staring sightlessly at the man who had killed her.  The man who had once been her father.

"I'm sorry," Cas said quietly.

Dean got unsteadily to his feet.  He felt even shakier than the first time he'd been hit by the spell, like sparks were grating across his skin and under it and in his soul, about to catch fire at any moment.  "Cas," he said, moving to stand next to his friend.  Cas didn't move, frozen over the body of the girl he'd killed.  "There was nothing you could have done to save her.  She wanted to die.  Even if you hadn't done it, I think she would've-"

He stopped, gasping for breath.  Something sharp and white-hot stabbed him in the chest, and the edges of his vision turned black.

"Dean?  Dean!"

Cas' terrified face swam into view above him.  He coughed, trying to speak, to do anything other than lie skewered on the floor- and since when was he on the floor anyway?- but he couldn't.  He was broken, shattered, collapsing in on himself, in on the invisible blade spearing his lungs.

"Sam, the spell," Cas said desperately.  "They're still connected, she's dragging him under-"

"Shit," Sam said.  "Shit shit shit- Dean just hold on, alright?"  Dean could hear Sam moving around, flipping through pages of a spellbook, gathering the ingredients to reverse the spell.  "Dean, stay with us."

Dean coughed again, the air rasping through his lungs like sandpaper.  "Don't have anywhere to go," he managed to choke out.

His eyes slipped in and out of focus, blurring the panic on Cas' face, then bringing it back into sharp relief.  "Dammit Dean," Cas was muttering, almost to himself.  "Don't do this to me again, I can't-  Stay with me, please, stay with me-"

"Gee, Cas, didn't know you cared," Dean breathed through the searing pain.  "Thought you..."  He coughed.  There was a hole in his lungs, in his heart, passing through skin and muscle and pooling blood inside his throat and on the ground.  "Thought you didn't want me."

Cas closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  "Dean Winchester, you're an idiot," he whispered as Sam began chanting the spell.  He leaned forward and kissed Dean gently, tenderly.

For a brief moment, Dean couldn't feel any pain at all.

"There will never be a time," Cas murmured as he pulled away, "and there will never be a version of you that I don't love with every inch of my being."

"Huh..." Dean coughed, his breath barely moving now, trapped in the black hole centered on his chest.  "Well isn't... that... something..."

Darkness seeped into the edges of his vision, in time with the harsh drag of air flowing out through the nonexistent hole in his lungs.  He could barely see Cas' face anymore, could barely feel the hands cupping his cheeks or hear Sam chanting nearby.  He tried to focus, to give Cas a soft smile.  He wasn't sure if he managed it as the pain dragged him down, down, down.

"Dean!  _Dean!_ "

He drifted into nothingness.


	10. To Be Where I Have Been

_Oh let the sun beat down upon my face,_   
_stars to fill my dream._   
_I am a traveler of both time and space,_   
_to be where I have been._

        -"Kashmir," Led Zeppelin

 

* * *

 

 

_Let's go take a howl at that moon._

_***_

_He'd had a nightmare like this once, he muses.  Several times.  Where he stands in the center of a room and the dead lie all around him, bleeding sluggishly onto the floor.  Dead by his own hand.  It's not a nightmare now, but he can't really bring himself to care.  That's the point of all this, right?  That he doesn't have to care about this anymore._

_To prove the point, he takes his time killing the kid whimpering at his feet.  The blood feels so fucking good sliding down his fingers as he slices slowly, oh so slowly through every layer of flesh._

_"Come to see the show, Sammy?" he asks as his brother tries to steal his way into the room.  "I thought I told you to let me go."_

_"That's not going to happen," Sam tells him, and the butt of a gun knocks him out._

_***_

_Chains rattle against his wrists, stinging slightly as the symbols brush against his skin.  Those goddamn chains hold him immobile, powerless, the first drawback he's even noticed to being a demon.  He snarls and his eyes flash black._

_Sam and Cas flinch at the sight.  "If I do it, the trials will just start up again right where I left off," Sam says grimly._

_"Are you sure?" Cas asks.  "There's a lot we don't know about-"_

_"I can't do it," Sam says._

_"What's the matter, Sammy?" Dean says, grinning at them both.  "Don't want to sacrifice yourself for your brother?  Or is it that you don't want to put your blood inside me, make our little bond even stronger?  I'll be grateful to you, you know, do my very best to protect you like a good older brother-"_

_"Shut up," Sam snaps.  He doesn't hide his discomfort well._

_"I'll do it," Cas says quietly._

_Dean pulls against the chains and chuckles at the thought._

_"Are you sure?" Sam asks.  "Your grace-"_

_"It was never mine to begin with," Cas says.  "I can be human again for Dean."_

_Dean laughs, and he keeps on laughing as Cas begins to spill stolen grace for him._

_***_

_The hours are long, and the human blood begins to itch where it mixes with his own._

_***_

_"Cas," he whispers hoarsely.  It's been five hours, and there's a war going on inside him.  It was easier when he didn't have to care.  "Why are you doing this?  I'm not worth it.  You keep giving up everything for me, and I- I don't deserve it.  I don't deserve to be saved."_

_Cas pauses as he prepares the next syringe of his blood.  "You really believe that, don't you," he murmurs.  He rolls the syringe in his fingers as he steps closer.  "You do deserve it, Dean," he tells him.  "When I saved you from Hell you deserved to be saved, and you deserve to be saved now."_

_"How are you so sure?" he asks._

_Cas looks at him with a smile.  "Because you're a good man," he says.  He leans forward to inject the blood._

_Dean turns his head and catches Cas' lips in a kiss._

_The syringe clatters on the floor as Cas gasps.  When Dean pulls away, Cas' face is pale, his eyes wide with shock.  They stare at each other for several long, painfully silent moments._

_"Sorry," Dean says finally.  "I don't know why I just- forget that ever happened.  I just wanted-  But of course you wouldn't-"_

_Cas lunges forward and kisses him fiercely, greedily.  Dean matches his hunger, opening his mouth with a needy moan, licking at the seam of Cas' lips, biting lightly at the skin there.  Cas' breath hitches as he moves closer, trying to find the right angle while he's standing and Dean is still sitting- Dean solves the dilemma by pulling Cas forward until he's straddling Dean's lap.  His skin is burning hot where it touches Dean's, and he starts making unconscious little movements with his hips, desperate for the friction building between them._

_Dean smiles against his mouth and bites down harder as he sucks on Cas' lip.  Cas gasps and kisses him even more fiercely._

_"Mmm," Dean mumbles, moving on to mouth at Cas' jawline.  "You're just gasping for it, aren't you?"_

_"Dean-"  Whatever Cas was going to say is swallowed by the catch of his breath as Dean bites and sucks at the soft column of his neck._

_"No more grace to hold you back, to turn you into a good little angel, huh?" Dean continues.  He pulls Cas' hips forward to grind against his own, dragging a sharp moan from Cas' mouth.  "That's it, sweetheart," he whispers, holding Cas' skin bruisingly tight.  "C'mon, baby, just like that.  I'm gonna make it so good for you-"  He bites down on Cas' lip as hard as he can, drawing blood._

_Cas pulls back sharply, staring at him with wide eyes.  Dean grins and licks the blood that dripped onto his lips.  His eyes flash black._

_"What's wrong, baby?" he asks lecherously.  "Don't you want a piece of this?"_

_His laughter follow Cas all the way out the room._

_***_

_"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus.  Hanc animam redintegra, lustra!"_

_The blood soaks into his mouth and he screams at the heat searing through his body._

_"Lustra!"_

_"LUSTRA!"_

_***_

_"We can go on a hunt, at least," Sam says, avoiding his eyes.  He's been doing that a lot lately.  Avoiding Dean's eyes.  Avoiding him.  "Do some good, you know?"_

_Dean nods, but he knows that hunting isn't going to help.  It won't change what's happened, what he's done.  What he's become.  He's the one who has to do that- but he has no idea where to even begin._

_He skirts around Cas and doesn't look at him as he walks past, even though he can feel Cas' eyes following his movements.  What he did to Sam, to Cas, he can't undo any of that.  Hunting won't help, but at least it will be a distraction from the world that's come back with a vengeance to perch on his shoulders.  And hey, if he's lucky, maybe some stray monster will put him out of his misery.  That would be a whole lot easier than trying to figure out what exactly he's supposed to do to fix this._

_If he can't turn back time, maybe his death will be enough._

_***_

_The girl looks up and smiles.  "Dean, there you are," she says.  Her blood drips into a bowl, sprays across the room on the branch of a fir tree._

_The spell hits him.  He fires a shot and stumbles after her.  Pain erupts everywhere, he can't stand up straight, can't see her anymore to make it stop.  There's blood on the ground and he slips, collapses in pain, and the blackness overcomes him._

***

Dean blinked his eyes open, trying to bring them into focus.  For a moment he was confused by the familiar sight of his bedside table.  He half-expected to see the crumbling ceiling of an abandoned factory above him, not the comforting beams of his own room in the bunker- although for the life of him, he couldn't think of why.

He began to move and thought better of it as soon as he did.  Everything felt sore, like he'd gotten into a fistfight with a werewolf.  Not that he remembered doing that lately.  Not that he remembered much of... anything happening lately.  Huh.  Probably not a good sign.

With a monumental effort, he turned his head to find Cas dozing in a chair next to him.

"Hey," he said quietly.  His breath rasped in his lungs unpleasantly.

Cas jerked into full wakefulness immediately.  "Dean," he said, and hang on, was that embarrassment on his face?  Was Castiel, angel of the Lord, embarrassed that Dean caught him napping?  "You're awake.  How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Dean lied, thought the gravel in his voice kind of gave him away.  "A little sore maybe."  He rubbed his eyes.  "How long was I out?"

"Three days," Cas said quietly.  "You had a close call."

Dean smiled weakly.  "And you've been watching me this whole time, I take it?  I've told you have creepy that is, right?"

Cas smiled in return, though he wasn't meeting Dean's eyes.  Dean frowned, searching his blank memories for the reason why.  All the memories were there, he could feel them, but they were blurred somehow.  Maybe because he knew that once he looked at them, there was no going back.  "You have, repeatedly," Cas said.  "I thought you might forgive me this time, given the circumstances."

"And those circumstances were..." Dean fished.

Cas hesitated, finally looking at him a little more fully.  "How much do you remember?" he asked, clearly hedging.

"Not much," Dean admitted.  "I remember..."  A blade of bone, Crowley, black eyes staring at him out of a mirror.  Blood, chains, a syringe, and the taste of Cas' mouth.  A factory and a spell.  Claire.

He swallowed down the bile that tried to escape his throat.

"I was a demon, and you cured me," he rasped, looking down.  His heart pounded with the force of the returning memories, and god how he wished he could just send them away again.  "Then I got cursed, acted like an idiot, and woke up here."  He raised his eyebrows at Cas, waiting for the rest.

Cas met his eyes, but fearfully, like he was dreading what he would see in Dean's face.  "We lured the person who cursed you into a trap," he said.

"Claire Novak."

"Right," Cas said, his mouth twisting with sadness.  "We had to kill her, to keep her from killing you through the spell, but you were still linked with her through the spell so it affected you too.  Sam managed to remove the bond, but for a while we were worried it was too late.  You- you wouldn't wake up."

The look on his face squeezed something in Dean's chest.  The same face he remembered seeing when Claire hit Dean with the spell, when he flashed black eyes at Cas, when Cas watched him walk away.  Without thinking, Dean reached out and touched his hand where it rested on the bed.

Cas startled, something like panic flickering in his eyes.  He pulled his hand away sharply and got to his feet.  "I'll go let Sam know you're awake," he muttered, and fled the room.

Dean's heart sank as he watched Cas leave.  It seemed there was a lot he needed to make up for.  If only he knew where to even start.

***

He managed to climb out of bed after psyching himself up for an hour.  His muscles screamed in protest, but once he got moving it wasn't too bad.  He still walked with his hand on the wall to steady himself, but it was less from the muscle weakness and more from the dizzying double vision he seemed to have acquired.  Everything he looked at shifted with nauseating unpredictability between the way the bunker looked to him now with all his memories intact, and what it had seemed to him when he was twenty-six.

Without his memories, it had looked like a prison.  Now, it looked like home.

He hesitated when he heard voices around the corner, every instinct telling him to run away, avoid facing for as long as possible the painful encounters that were surely in store for him.  His fingers tensed on the cool tile wall, trying to get a grip to pull him back, lead him back to safety- but Sam's face swam in to the front of his mind, his expression one of pained resignation, knowing that Dean didn't understand what he'd meant.  He hadn't understood, not when he was young and frightened, but things were different now, weren't they?

He wasn't twenty-six anymore, and Sam was right.  He couldn't go on pretending that he was the same person that he'd been back then, and that his only purpose in life was to protect Sam.  The bunker was a home, not a prison, so maybe if he took the leap, this could be a real family too.

"Dean, you're up!" Sam said in surprise as Dean rounded the corner into the library.

Dean grunted as he collapsed into a chair.  "No shit," he said lightly.  "Three days seemed like enough time to spend lying around in bed."  He glanced over at Cas sitting one table over, but Cas was looking studiously at the wood grain and didn't notice.

Sam on the other hand was peering at Dean, concern and discomfort in the lines of his face and the tension in his shoulders.  "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Dean opened his mouth to give his customary _fine, Sam, lay off would you_ , but something in Sam's expression stopped him.  He swallowed and shrugged.  "Like I went through a meat grinder and got put back together again," he said.  He looked down at his hands.  It was now or never.  "Like I did some seriously stupid shit, and said some things I shouldn't have," he added quietly.

"Dean, you were cursed-" Sam began.

"I mean before that," Dean interrupted, meeting his brother's eyes again.  "The whole... thing with the Mark of Cain, all the shit I did as a demon- and yeah, when I was cursed, too."  He took a deep breath, struggling to find even the most basic words to express what he wanted to say.  "You were right, Sammy," he said.  "When you said I was stuck on the way I used to be when I was younger.  Dad's orders, all that.  I didn't understand what you meant before, but...  I think I'm starting to.  Or at least, I can try.  I guess, uh, what I mean to say is that-"

"That you used to be an asshole?" Sam said.

Dean rolled his eyes, some of the tension in his gut releasing a little.  "Fuck you, Sam, I'm having a moment here."

Sam hid his smile.  "Sorry, sorry.  Continue, please."

"What I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry.  For everything."  He swallowed.  "I don't know what I can do to change, to make it right, or... or even if it's possible, but... I'd like to try."

"We'll figure it out," Sam assured him.  "Maybe... maybe the first thing you can try to do is just... focus on yourself for a bit, you know?  Don't worry about me, just worry about yourself.  Figure out what it is that you want."

"Right," Dean snorted.  "Because that sounds healthy."

"Maybe it is.  Dean, it's okay to be selfish.  It's okay to put yourself first."

Dean hummed skeptically.  He couldn't see how being selfish would fix anything- in fact he was pretty sure he would just ruin everything all over again, like he always did.  But Sam was smiling at him for the first time in ages, and maybe it was about time that Dean followed his brother's advice.

Sam hesitated, then reached out to touch his shoulder.  "Thank you," he said earnestly.

"I haven't done anything yet," Dean said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.  "I don't even know what it'll take to-"  He stopped as his eyes fell on Cas' empty chair.  "Cas?" he called, but Cas was already up the stairs and slipping out the front door.  Leaving him behind.  "Shit-  Cas!"

Sam watched him closely.  "That could be the first thing you do," he said.

"What is?"

"Go after him," Sam said, smiling.

Dean coughed, air rasping painfully against the still-tender length of his throat and lungs.  " _What_?" he choked.

Sam just shrugged, his smiling widening.  "He's the first thing I've ever seen you want for yourself, even when you were cursed.  Seems like a pretty good place for you to start."

Dean couldn't help but gape at him as he struggled to get his breathing back to normal.  "You knew?" he whispered, his whole world tilting on its axis.  He'd done everything he could to hide this stupid little crush from Sam, how...  Unbidden, the memories of a thousand little moments came rushing into his head- Sam watching him drink himself half to death after Cas died, Sam asking about his feelings after Cas took off with the angel tablet, Sam joking about his crush on Cas when Dean was cursed.  Not just brotherly teasing after all.

Sam snorted.  "Dean, I'm with you practically 24/7, how could I _not_ know?"

Dean took a deep breath.  "Okay.  So, okay, I'll just... okay."

Sam grinned and clapped him on the shoulder.  "Go get him, tiger," he said.

The door leading outside was firmly shut by the time Dean got there.  He paused, suddenly overwhelmed by the double vision again in the face of this insurmountable barrier.  Or maybe it was jus anxiety churning in his stomach.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

"Cas?" he called quietly, slipping out of the bunker.  The air was crisp out here, refreshingly cool after feeling enclosed for so long.  Even so, winter had this place firmly in its grasp, leaving just weeds and some muddy footprints leading around to the other side of the bunker, out of sight among bare trees.

Dean followed the footprints hesitantly.  Maybe this was a terrible idea.  Maybe Cas didn't even want him to fix it, after everything he'd done to him.  Shit shit shit.

Cas' path led him through a copse of trees that bunched around the side of the exterior shell of the bunker, and to a small clearing bathed in weak winter sunshine.  Dean stopped, blinking at the sight before him: Cas kneeling on the ground in front of a sapling, it's branches heavy with bright green leaves, it's base lined with wildflowers and grasses that shouldn't even be sprouting in this part of the country, let alone at this time of year.  Cas' back was facing Dean, and Dean's heart ached at the despondent set of his shoulders, the shaking breath he took as he touched the sapling's leaves.

"Cas," Dean said quietly.

Cas jumped, scrambling to get on his feet and face him.  His eyes flicked up to Dean's face and then away again, his hand rubbing at the back of his neck.  "Dean.  I- I didn't see you."

"Yeah," Dean said, suddenly at a loss for words.  They stood silently for a moment, Dean trying vainly to catch Cas' eyes, Cas doing everything he could do avoid that.  "What is this place?" Dean asked finally.

Cas glanced down at the sapling at his feet.  "It's where I buried the grace I stole," he said distantly.  "This will be a full-grown oak in just a few weeks because of it."

"Oh," Dean said.  The silence returned, twisting in the air and almost choking him.  This was a bad idea, this was a bad idea, what the hell was he thinking, he couldn't just-

"I'm sorry," Dean blurted suddenly.  "For... you know.  I'm sorry."

Cas flinched.  "It's alright," he said.  He still wouldn't meet Dean's eyes.

"No, it's not," Dean said.  "I shouldn't have-"

"Dean, there's no need for you to apologize," Cas interrupted.  He swallowed.  "If anything, I should be the one apologizing to you."

Dean stared at him.  "What?" he said, forgetting whatever ill-conceived speech he'd been about to launch into.  What the hell did _Cas_ have to be sorry for?

Cas' gaze darted around the clearing, his fingers twisting in the hem of his shirt in uncharacteristic fidgets.  "I took advantage of you when your memory was compromised," he said quietly.  "You barely knew me, or anything that we've been through, and yet I kissed you even though I knew you didn't know any better.  I know that-"  He stopped and swallowed again.  When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse.  "I know that if you had been as you are now, you wouldn't have... you wouldn't have welcomed that kind of attention, and...  I'm sorry."

There was a roaring in Dean's ears, something both angry and overjoyed dancing in every heartbeat.  Cas thought he'd _taken advantage_ of him?  Seriously?  "Cas, you dumb fuck," he muttered.  He stepped forward hesitantly, feeling the weight of all his mistakes and his fuckups and all the damage he caused just by existing trying to hold him back.  He wasn't going to let them, not this time.  "Cas, that's not..." he said.  "I may have been an idiot, but... I wanted to.  Uh, I wanted _you_ , um...  Even if I didn't know... how to handle it.  And..."  He took another step forward and cleared his throat.  "You don't have to apologize, because I..."  Dammit, why was this so hard to say?  "It's like you said, that there won't ever be a time when... When, um..."

Fuck it.

He stepped into Cas' space and kissed him.  Not like the other times, when it had been need and desperation and pain driving him forward.  He kissed Cas with all the tenderness he could muster, soft and gently, his hands cupping his face and his thumbs tracing his cheekbones.  Cas had given up so much for him, and given him everything; now it was Dean's turn to give back himself.

Cas stood horribly still for a long moment.  Dean's heart was pounding hard, too hard, because it suddenly seemed like he'd misjudged horribly.

But then Cas' lips parted with a soft sigh, his hands moved to Dean's waist, his eyelashes fluttered against his cheek.  And it wasn't so much like forgiveness when Cas kissed him back, but a release.  Like a light breeze brushing past after a storm, a distant shore finally appearing over the horizon, a small green sapling growing strong despite the barren land all around it.  It felt like letting go- and it also felt like coming home.

Cas pulled away, his eyes shining and a smile dancing on his lips.  He traced over Dean's features with tender, reverent fingers.  The look in his eyes made Dean's breath hitch in his chest.  It was all too big for him to understand just yet, so big that it terrified him that he'd just taken this first step and it could all so easily crash down all around him.  But right here with Cas, he felt hopeful for what felt like the first time in his life.  Maybe he could have this.  Maybe he could live his life the way he wanted, and maybe he could have Cas here next to him, smiling at him with that look in his eyes for the rest of their lives.

"There you are, Dean," Cas whispered, and pulled him into another kiss.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading! This fic has been my baby for a lot longer than a 30k fic ought to have been, so it's immensely gratifying to see you guys have enjoyed reading it just as much as I enjoyed writing it. Many thanks to the folks in meta saloon for listening to me chatter about this long before it ever saw the light of day, and getting excited about it even when I was discouraged <3


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